The Ocean's Mercy
by PrincessOfTheNight93
Summary: Fareeha Amari was an experienced captain with a loyal crew and a family reputation stretching decades. She had seen them safely through any degree of disaster: storms of all sizes, attacks from hostile pirates, navigation issues, and even a stranding or two. She had thought she had seen all the sea had to throw at her. That was, until, her crew pulled a mermaid onto her deck.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is my first attempt at writing Overwatch fanfiction. I guess it's an art swap with hanghr on tumblr (there's a link to her bolg on my profile). She drew the initial art for Pharah's and Mercy's character designs and came up with the original concept and after discussing it for a while, we decided I would write it out as a full AU while she draws art for it. I'll link new pictures for it on my page as she finishes them. It's also my first attempt at writing Pharmercy so I hope ya'll like it.

* * *

Unlike her mother, Fareeha Amari didn't much care to associate herself with Overwatch. She supposed their intentions were noble enough, but the group of justice-orientated mercenaries was very secretive, very exclusive in who they recruited, and even the people they did business with were often left in the dark, given information on a need-to-know basis. That was not how Fareeha preferred to work when her ship was involved with transporting goods from one continent to the other.

For decades, her mother had worked for Overwatch exclusively, transporting goods of all shapes and sizes - most of it contraband that would have gotten her thrown in prison for five lifetimes if she was ever caught trying to bring it into some of the ports she had. To say that it had put a strain on their relationship was a bit of an understatement, especially given the generations of reputation their family had built as peerless sailors. After her mother's untimely death, Fareeha had made it very clear to the higher-ups of Overwatch that she would be involved in no illegal activity, and they largely ignored she existed for years, effectively cutting all their ties with her family. She supposed it was because an organization as big as Overwatch had an obscene amount of resources and could get any random sailor to transport their military-grade weapons from one country to another by throwing enough money at them. It was a loss of client-el that Fareeha did not regret in the slightest.

So, imagine her surprise when she was contacted by Overwatch's leader, a Jack Morrison, while in port in Germany for a few weeks between transport jobs. She had met the stone-faced American man over a few drinks in a pub. The negotiations started off pretty rocky, considering the first thing he brought up was now much he missed her mother's expertise. Fareeha had simply glared at him and given him an equally cold "I'm not my mother" before they began to discuss the details of what he wanted.

Morrison needed an assortment of weapons - perfectly legal ones, he assured her - transported from their base in Eichenwald to a small port in Australia. The sensitive issue was that those seas were plagued by a pirate gang known as the Junkers, and it was incredibly dangerous to traverse. He claimed he didn't want to send someone as inexperienced as his usual transporters to waters that deadly, so he was reaching out to someone who had experience dealing with and avoiding pirates. Namely, her and her crew. That's what he said, at least - though Fareeha personally thought it was more likely he couldn't find anyone stupid enough to cross paths with the Junkers. Fareeha and the crew of her ship, the Raptora, had locked horns with Talon pirates before and came out alive, but pirates were something she would never go out of her way to deal with. She almost told to shove it up his ass, but when he offered her more money than her last five jobs combined, she begrudgingly agreed to it.

That was two weeks ago, and to say they were off course was being generous. Almost immediately after leaving Germany, they hit one of the roughest storms she had seen all year - a sign of things to come, Fareeha was sure. It was nothing she hadn't dealt with a hundred times in the past, but it was enough to set them back several days. From where she was sitting at her desk in her quarters, Fareeha resisted the urge to sigh. Every second she was on this trip, she became more and more doubtful about it. She hadn't wanted to get involved in Overwatch and it's affairs, and even nature itself seen to be telling her that she was making a grave error.

As if reading her thoughts, she could suddenly hear an abnormal amount of activity and commotion on the deck above her. At least a dozen sets of footstep were sounding overhead and a lot of shouting accompanied the frenzy of motion. Deciding it was probably in her best interest to check up on it, Fareeha stood up, throwing her black gold-trimmed captain's coat over the white shirt and tie she was already wearing.

Upon reaching the deck, she could see a gathering of about thirteen deckhands - essentially her entire upper deck staff - standing around something towards the center of the ship. Ignoring how annoyed that made her when they were already far behind schedule, she moved toward them to see what the excitement was about.

As she approached the crowd and they quickly parted ways to allow space for their captain to pass through, Fareeha's eyes widened in shock at what the source of the activity was. Lying in the middle of the deck, tangled in the remnants of a net that a few bold crew members had attempted to cut her out of, was a creature that the young captain had only ever heard stories of. It was a mermaid and a strikingly beautiful one at that. It was like something straight out of a children's book, with long platinum blonde hair that fell to its shoulders in wet tendrils and striking blue eyes the same color as the ocean it had just been pulled from. The tail spread out behind the mermaid was a mix of golden and orange hues that shimmered in the sunlight. The golden scales even ran up the torso a bit, covering the gill slits just below its breasts on both sides of her body. Fins stuck out at various points of the creature's body - most dominantly the large dorsal fin that ran almost the entire length of its back. Identical fins stuck out where its ears would if been if it was a person, and at the elbows.

However, the pretty face and a colorful tail were where the appeal ended, for the mermaid's body language was anything but soft. It was wired, tense, razor-sharp teeth bared as a quiet growl seemed to be coming from the back of its throat. The mermaid's dorsal fin was flared upward, trying to make itself look bigger. It supported its upper body with its hands, glaring at all of the surrounding humans at once, challenging all of them to come anywhere nearby. When Fareeha finally made it closer to the creature, its blue eyes snapped to her own brown eyes, and there was nothing there but aggression. The captain took another step toward the creature, and the growl evolved into a hiss as it seemed to recoil slightly, the bloodlust almost immediately replaced by unease.

In a way, she found the display a bit disappointing - she had heard stories about mermaids, about how they could supposedly communicate with people, how they could be related to and experienced sentience and some degree of self-awareness, but this one in front of her was nothing more than an animal - a scared one, granted, but an animal. And if there was one thing Fareeha had learned with dealing animals, it was to recognize when one was agitated, and this mermaid was miles past that point. She finally tore her gaze away from the defensive glare of the mermaid and back to a group of the men and women standing around.

"So, what exactly were you doing while I was below deck for ten minutes?" Her eyebrow was arched. "You all have much better things to be doing than harassing the local wildlife, don't you think?"

"With all due respect, Captain," one of the men grunted in response, "it is a mermaid."

"I don't care what the hell it is," she snapped back, "it doesn't belong on my deck." As Fareeha glanced back at the aquatic crypid on the deck mere feet from her, she began to remember the much darker side of the stories she had heard of merfolk: sirens who lured entire ships to their deaths with mirages and beautiful songs, mermaids and mermen who drowned people for pleasure, monsters who resented humanity and would do anything they could to bring death to humans they found on the seas. Hell, even captive mermaids had been known to kill their owners through the power of their voices and their inhuman beauty. There was absolutely no part of her that wanted such a dangerous creature on her ship, let alone in close proximity to almost her entire crew.

"Should we take it to that tank on the lower deck?" another voice asked.

"Absolutely not," Fareeha snapped in response, horrified that he was suggesting they actually keep the mermaid. "I want that thing thrown back in the water where it belongs. We still have several weeks on this trip and I'm not going to keep a dangerous animal we know nothing about on board." The only response the captain got from her crew after that was silence and a very heavy atmosphere that made it all too obvious to her that none of them agreed with the call she was making. "If any of you have something to say, I'm always open to suggestions," she deadpanned.

Finally, one of the women in the group sighed. "Captain, it's just that mermaids are as rare and as valuable as they come. People pay millions for them. We'd be-"

"We have a job to be doing," Fareeha reminded her sharply, as her harsh eyes skimmed over the entire crowd of sailors who were definitely neglecting their duties to stand around gawking at the mermaid. She didn't even want to know how much time had already been wasted by the sheer effort of spotting, netting and hauling the thing on board in the first place. "We don't have time to mess around with something like this," Fareeha continued heatedly. "We're already running behind schedule and you all have duties you are supposed to be performing right now that are far more important than talking about selling a mermaid."

"These things are menaces," another man spoke up. "There's no telling how many sailors have died at the hands of creatures like that one."

Fareeha's eyebrow arched. "And that makes me want it on my ship even less."

"That's why we should take it from the ocean," he persisted. "It's one less killer plaguing the seas. At least in a tank, it won't be hurting anyone."

Pondering over his words, Fareeha looked back at the mermaid once more. It was still staring directly at her, teeth still bared, body still poised like it was prepared to strike her at any second. In fact, the creature was so tense that she was certain that the only reason it hadn't tried to make a break for the edge of the ship was because of the sheer amount of people surrounding it. It had nowhere to go - it was simply cornered, and so was reacting in the only way a cornered animal knew how to. Still...it hadn't actually hurt anyone yet. Of course, the captain was more than aware of the reputation merfolk had, but it was just that: a reputation. Fareeha had never seen any of the attacks herself, she merely heard accounts from far-off sailors and their tales, and nobody really knew where fact ended and fiction began.

And even if they were true, was it fair to hold this one mermaid accountable for the morbid actions of others of its kind? As far as they knew, this one was completely harmless. Even if it was about as intelligent as an animal, it was still wild - it had spent its entire life in the ocean. To take it from something like that, condemning it to a boundary of four glass walls for the rest of its life based on stories and legends, seemed cruel.

Even so, Fareeha wasn't entirely opposed to the idea. It might not have been fair, but she'd be lying to herself if she didn't admit that she was curious about the creature. This would be the only opportunity she'd ever have in her life to see a mermaid, to see how it swims, how it interacts to environments around it, how it feeds. They weren't going to touch land for more than a few hours for a least a month. That was a long time to observe the mermaid in her very limited free time. She looked back to the cryptid's expressive blue eyes, as two of the small fins growing out the side of its tail slapped down against the scales with a tiny smacking sound.

Finally, Fareeha nodded. "Alright. But I don't want anyone going near it for at least a full day. We still have no idea what it's capable of."

It happened so quickly that Fareeha barely processed it. As a deckhand reached for the mermaid's arm to restrain it, it twisted its entire torso with the speed of a snake and sunk its mouth full of razor-sharp teeth into his leg. The man let out a howl of pain and the mermaid, as quickly as it lashed out, recoiled heavily as if he had struck it across the face. It allowed its torso to rest on the wooden deck as it stared at the person it had attacked, blue eyes wide. The dorsal fin was lying flat against the mermaid's back, ears tilted downward as it made its entire body sink lower to the floor. In the next instant, three men had jumped on the creature's back, one of them pushing the mermaid's head down against the hard ground cheek-first while another man grabbed both of its wrists and held them behind its back. The mermaid writhed under them and made a few distressed whimpers from deep within its throat, but had no means to fight back against them.

Fareeha's lips pursed as she watched the struggle unfold, brown eyes slowly shifting from the mermaid to the gaping wound on her sailor's leg, then back to the mermaid again. She no longer had a legitimate argument to make in defense of the animal; it had just sealed its own fate in that small act of violence. It had proven that it was willing to attack a human, and that was all the crew would need to consider it too dangerous to set free. Even if she didn't entirely agree with it, she had to maintain a semblance of reason, and after that, there was no reasonable conclusion she could come to that didn't end with the mermaid being imprisoned. At that point, it wasn't worth getting her crew angry at her.

Two more deckhands stepped forward and between the five of them, they picked the creature up and carried it to a lower deck. Fareeha was silent as she watched the mermaid vanish from her sight, and instead looked to the injured deckhand.

"Damn thing," he grumbled.

"Go see the medic," Fareeha told him. "At the very least, make sure it gets cleaned and dressed." With that, she stepped away from him. He'd be fine; the mermaid hadn't done any serious lasting damage. It was just a blood-drawing bite and she was certain that she'd never heard of a story of merfolk being venomous before.

Despite her hesitation in keeping their new cargo, Fareeha did find herself somewhat curious about the cryptid. She had truly never even seen a merperson before. They were exotic, elusive, exceptionally rare creatures, and their value was something that could hardly be fathomed. They lived exclusively in the mansions and palaces of the wealthiest people in the world, serving as centerpieces of their fortunes and empires. While Fareeha and her crew were certainly not struggling for money, they were a far cry from the people who usually got to lay their eyes on such a luxury. A live wild mermaid hadn't even been seen in well over a decade, much less captured alive. They were reclusive and incredibly aggressive when cornered. And yet there was one of these absurdly rare creatures just a couple decks below her feet. At the very least, she could observe the beast before it was inevitably sold to the tune of millions.

Ignoring the warning bells going off in the back of her head, she moved down the stairs to their lowest deck, where they had a small storage tank. It was there more so as a place to store emergency food in the case they ran through their supplies and needed to resort to catching fish. She could only recall having used it two or three times in her career, but now it was serving a much different purpose. As she pushed the door to the small room open, she stopped.

A couple of crew members who hadn't been on the deck when the mermaid had been pulled out of the water were gathered in the room, but when they saw their captain the immediately straightened up and left the room before she could say anything to them. Fareeha resisted the urge to sigh; the damn mermaid was already making it hard for people to listen to her orders. Maybe that's where they got their reputation as enchantresses from. Finally, she came to a stop directly in front of the wall of glass that took up most of the room. The mermaid was barely visible - it was curled up in a compact ball in the far corner of the square tank, shielding everything but the orange-gold of its tail from prying eyes. As Fareeha sat down on one of the storage crates in the room, watching the mermaid intensely as she rested her arms on her legs, she couldn't help be struck with a strong feeling of pity for the beast. It was just frightened. They had unceremoniously ripped it from its natural habitat, ganged up on it and restrained it, and they stuck it in a cage where it had nowhere to hide. The entire time the mermaid had been in her presence, it had been tense and on-edge; even now, the position it was laying in wasn't natural or relaxed - it was forcing itself into such a small shape as if to cease to exist, shielding itself from the reality of the situation it found itself.

The captain seemed to recall that soft voices and gentle tones could help to calm scared animals. Perhaps that would work with the mermaid.

"My name is Fareeha," she told the creature, her voice even. "Captain Fareeha Amari." For a moment, Fareeha doubted that the mermaid could hear her through the glass, but its tail shifted ever so slightly, allowing a blue eye to stare at her from behind the wall of gold. "Do you have a name?" Unsurprisingly, the mermaid just continued to watch her with the same blank glaze to its eye and she once again tried to ignore the nagging feeling of disappointment. This mermaid was no more sentient than a dog or a cat. It couldn't even understand the words she was speaking to it, much less communicate with her.

"I don't want to call you 'mermaid'. How about I give you a name? Would you like that?" The mermaid just blinked silently. For a long moment, she returned the creature's silence, pondering to herself over what kind of a name would suit a creature she knew nothing about. The only thing she had really seen the mermaid do was bite one of her sailors on the leg and immediately change its mind and show him a tiny bit of mercy by letting go. Fareeha smiled to herself before making eye contact with the mermaid once more. "How about Mercy? It means to show kindness or compassion when you don't have to. Sort of how you decided to not tear one of my deckhand's legs off. That was an act of mercy, right? I think it suits you." The irony of naming a dangerous mermaid Mercy wasn't lost on Fareeha, but she highly doubted that the creature cared in the slightest what she called it.

When she looked at the mermaid's blue eye once more, however, it had changed. Mercy's expression seemed to be a bit harsher and it only stared back at Fareeha's own brown eyes for another moment before the tail covered it's face once more.

After that final display, Fareeha knew that there was nothing she could say that would coax the mermaid out of its defensive ball, so rather than waste her time, she stood up. Mercy just needed time to get comfortable, needed to be left alone and given time adjust to its new surroundings. It certainly wasn't going to just sit in that ball for the entire trip, it was only a matter of time before the mermaid calmed down. Before exiting the room, Fareeha looked back at Mercy for a second. The mermaid's tail had moved so that two ocean blue eyes were watching her as she retreated, but they were filled with such a deep sadness that she hesitated in the doorway for several seconds. Finally, Fareeha shook her head and closed the door behind her, sure that she was just imagining it.


	2. Chapter 2

Very little changed from her normal morning routine. Fareeha awoke at the crack of dawn, as her body had been trained for years to do. She could see the beginning of sunlight on the blue horizon from the window just overlooking her bed. Fighting back a yawn, she blindly reached out for the oil lantern that sat on a desk by her bedside in the small cabin. Her room was by far the largest private sleeping quarters on the ship, but it was more so for functionality than the luxury. The room contained two desks, each with a wooden chair in front of it. The one closest to her bed held a telegrapher, the smaller of the two. A map, compass, writing utensils and a stack of books sat on the larger desk, which was pressed against the wall directly opposite the door leading to the main upper deck.

Fareeha mechanically began to dress in the same outfit she wore every day while out at sea: a long-sleeved button-up white shirt with matching pants and black boots that ran up to her knees. She tucked a black tie into the shirt so that the stop of it was the only part that showed. The last, and most impressive, part of her attire, however, was the thigh-length coat she wore. It was solid black on the outside and white on the inside, trimmed with gold on the shoulders, collar, sleeves, and where the inside folded back. Her head was shaved on both sides, which she kept tied back into a ponytail. Once she looked as presentable as she was going to, she pushed the door to her bedroom open and stepped outside.

As she stepped out on deck, she took a moment to look around. At the moment, nobody was awake save the three deckhands who had worked the night shift, making sure they stayed on course and didn't hit anything. The day crew wouldn't be awake until her first mate finally got them moving. The lack of activity didn't surprise her; she usually was awake before anyone else.

Fareeha began to move toward the stairs that led to the lower decks. The Raptora was a moderately sized merchant ship with one mast and two levels to the underside of it: the first level was where the crew slept and it housed a few small cabins with different purposes: private quarters for the first mate, a kitchen, a communal area to eat, a small room that functioned as a medic bay for the rare occasion that they had real injuries or sicknesses on board, and a toilet. The bottom most deck was storage, though, at the moment, it was far emptier than normal - their own supplies and food stores took up more space than the boxes they were actually transporting. It seemed like the money they were being paid by Overwatch was less for the actual service, and more for the dangerous nature of where they were headed. However, the bottom deck did hold something that was far more valuable than some weapons, and that was the mermaid. The tank she was in was on the very bottom level of the boat, not far from the entrance to the bilge chamber. Fareeha supposed she should probably see how Mercy was doing, see if it had calmed down at all. It was still pretty early and she doubted that her first mate would be awake in the next half hour or so - he was just annoying like that.

She only turned away from the calm morning horizon when a cheerful, chipper voice sounded from far overhead.

"Hiya!"

Fareeha tried not to wince as she looked upward in the direction the all-too-familiar greeting had come from, almost dreading what act of stupidly she was about to witness. A brown-haired woman was hanging from the netting just under one of the masts upside-down, her thighs the only thing keeping her from falling to her death, as she stared out at the water, a small metal tool in her hand. At the moment, her warm brown eyes were smiling down at her, but after a few seconds, the smile vanished and she looked out to sea again, brow furrowed.

"Lena Oxton," she said loudly, trying to look more so stern than completely exasperated, "what _are_ you doing?"

A brown eyebrow arched at her as she looked back down at the captain. "My job?"

Absolutely nothing about the situation surprised Fareeha in the slightest, from the fact Lena was up apparently before dawn, or that she was hanging upside-down at least a story above the deck of the ship while trying to read a sextant. That was all par for the course with Lena Oxton. She was one of the most cheerful and energetic people Fareeha had ever met in her life. She was as brave as they came - almost stupidly so. Still, the girl was absolutely brilliant, probably one of the best seafaring navigators in all of Europe. Her ability to read tiny cues that nobody else could, to see tiny signs in the waves, to feel shifts in the wind, to see things on the horizon that would indicate a location, even - it was unlike anything Fareeha had ever seen. Nobody else on the ship even came close to her level of perception and it had earned her much respect from her fellow shipmates. Some of them had even taken to calling her Tracer.

And as exasperating to Fareeha as it was when she came across Lena doing things like endangering her entire spine, the captain had to give her credit for her determination; Lena had been working tirelessly for the better half of two weeks, day and night, trying to get them back on course.

"I have no doubt of that, Lena," she said, trying not to smile at her, as the crossed-armed glare the English navigator currently had her fixed in was hard to be angry at, "but I can't help but feel you'd be more effective at it if you were on the deck."

Lena waved her hand dismissively. "I needed a tad bit of altitude."

"We have a crow's nest for that exact reason. Or," she gestured to the mast directly above the brunette, "you could stand on the mast. Literally anywhere but the position you are currently in. I don't think Lucio has a remedy for a broken neck." Silence, as Lena focused on the instrument in her hand, still frowning. "So, are you just going to wait for me to tell you to get down from there?" Fareeha called up to her. "Because if so, I formally offer you an invitation to join me down here on the deck."

Lena let out an over-dramatized sigh. "You'll have to ask me out to dinner before I'll accept anything so formal, luv."

That time, Fareeha actually did crack a smile. "Consider it a date."

Lena snorted. "Aye-aye, Cap'n." With that, she grasped the netting with both hands, doing a flip as she allowed her legs to slide from their hold and the momentum of the sudden lack of support caused her entire body to turn right-side up. In about thirty seconds, she had climbed down from the dangerous height.

"Before you treat me to a lovely breakfast under the sunrise," the navigator said, pulling a piece of paper out of her pocket, "I thought I should probably let'cha know what we're looking at." She unfolded the paper, which was a much-abused navigational map of a large blue body of water, with numerous scribbles and notes covering almost the entire thing that were barely legible and completely incoherent to Fareeha. As Lena laid it down on the deck in front of her and sat down crossed-legged directly in front of it, she pulled a pencil out that had been tucked against her ear and added something else to the mess. It looked like a number, but Fareeha had no idea what it was supposed to mean.

Lena, however, seemed perfectly capable of deciphering what the marks meant, as she gave the captain a smile that she thought was supposed to be encouraging. "I think I got it," she half-sang. As she spoke, she stood up once more to hold the sextant level with her eyes. "We're still a bit off where we're supposed to be, but I think if we keep going northeast from here," she gestured in the direction behind her, "we should be back on track within a couple days." She paused. "'Course, it all depends on the wind and if we don't end up running straight into another storm, but we should be just fine from here on out."

Fareeha bit back an urge to sigh, both from moderate relief, but also mild frustration. They were just damn lucky that Morrison hadn't given them a deadline because if he had, they would need a miracle to hit it. Still, it was beyond fortunate they had a navigator as good as Lena was; Fareeha had too many other duties and daily operations to oversee to be able to constantly be leaning over a steering wheel and micromanaging and recording every tiny movement they made.

"Thank you, Lena," she finally said, releasing a relieved smile.

Lena gave her a small sort of salute. "I never got us lost before, don't plan on starting now."

"I don't think that's entirely accurate," Fareeha said with a chuckle, to which Lena quickly arched her eyebrow at. "Come now, Lena - you know we've had navigation issues in the past."

"Not on my watch, you haven't."

Fareeha folded her arms across her chest. "So you're telling me that not once in all the years I've sailed with you, you've never once been even remotely lost?"

Lena winked at her. "You got it."

Fareeha fought the urge to roll her eyes. "Then I suppose this is the first mark on your record, isn't it?"

Lena let out another snort of laughter. "Luv, with all due respect, I know you're the boss and all, and I wouldn't leave port without you on a bet, but I wasn't the one who forgot to check for weather signs the day we left. That fell solely on your mighty shoulders, Cap'n."

Fareeha playful shoved her shoulder away. "Go man the rudder before I have you thrown overboard."

With a laugh, Lena stepped away. "Then you'd really be lost."

* * *

When Fareeha entered the room where the mermaid was being kept, she was somewhat surprised to see that it had in fact moved from the far corner of the tank. She had been expecting to see it still curled up in a defensive little ball, though the position it had moved to wasn't exactly inviting. Now Mercy was lying on the floor of the tank, staring quietly at its reflection in the sheet of glass on the ground below it. The mermaid's dorsal fin was pressed flat to its back, it's ears dipped downwards, webbed fingers twirling a strand of blonde hair around an index finger in a motion that was almost eerily human-like. What Fareeha tried to not see was that the same look of sadness that dominated Mercy's eyes as she left it last night was still very much present, if not worse.

What made her hesitate in the entryway, however, was not the dejected look on Mercy's face, but rather the soft, muffled hum that seemed to be coming from the tank. It was then that Fareeha realized that the mermaid's lips were moving. It was singing, but softly, so softly that it was not meant to be heard by her ears.

"The song of a mermaid can kill a human."

That was something that she and every other sailor had been taught to know since they set foot on a ship for the first time. It was a lesson taught by no one in particular - it was merely known, was merely an instinctive, unspoken code they all lived by. Just as you respected the seas, you respected the creatures that dwell within it, lest you risk incurring the wrath of the very thing you are at the constant mercy of. There were so many tales of the magical qualities of a mermaid's voice, and none of them fared well for the human subjected to it.

A ship is sent to the bottom of the sea with its entire crew on board, drawn into a trap by angelic voices.

An enchantress singing its trust for a lovestruck captain, only to drag him to a dark death below the waves, wrapped in the very arms of the creature he trusted.

Sailors stranded at sea toyed with, made to believe the creature was there to help, only to be slaughtered by a creature of inhuman beauty.

Songs that could stop hearts, that could lull sailors to sleep, that doomed those who heard it. Otherworldly, in ancient, foreign languages that a human could never fathom, beautiful, but a harbinger of doom.

Only death followed those who interacted with mermaids. That was a fact. And yet, here she was with one imprisoned on her very ship. There was no telling what kind of morbid intentions the beast could have in mind, and Fareeha would be lying to herself if she didn't admit that she was incredibly leery of what it would do if the creature just snapped, if it allowed fear to overtake its instincts, or if it simply just became tired of being confined to a tank.

Perhaps her naming it Mercy would come back to bite her in the ass. A grim smile turned her lips upward as she considered how ironic that would be. Mercy, the mermaid who sent Fareeha Amari and the entire crew of the Raptora to their deaths on a perfectly calm sunlight morning.

"How beautifully poetic," she muttered to herself.

At the sudden sound of her voice, the mermaid's head shot up, fixing her with a startled look that was so panicked that the captain found herself lifting her hands up, showing Mercy that she had nothing that could possibly harm it.

"It's alright, Mercy. I'm not going to hurt you." She forced her voice into a soft murmur, hoping the tone would keep the tense creature somewhat calm. "Relax. I was just checking up on you." She took a step closer to the tank, and the mermaid mimicked her movement, golden tail slowly moving its body through the confined space of water until Mercy's back was pressed against the far wall of its glass cage. Fearful blue eyes cut into Fareeha's brown eyes like daggers.

Keeping her moments slow as not to startle it further, she sat down on one of the crates adjacent to the tank, not breaking eye contact with Mercy once. The mermaid seemed to be shrinking under her gaze. Gradually, it was sinking to the same corner it had retreated to yesterday, slowly curling its tail around its body, slowly closing itself off from her. Mercy never broke eye contact with her; Fareeha was the one to do that. She still had this nagging voice at the back of her head, constantly telling her that she should never have allowed the mermaid to be placed in the tank in the first place and Mercy's gaze was unnerving in ways that she couldn't quite place. It wasn't just the fear, the way its blue eyes watched her warily from behind the cover of its tail. There was something else there, but she had no idea what. All Fareeha did know that the mermaid was making her feel somewhat on-edge.

Shaking it off, she finally met Mercy's eyes once more. She had fought with pirates and got her entire crew out alive, for God's sake - she'd be damned if she let an animal get to her.

"Were you singing just now?" she asked the mermaid. "I didn't mean to startle you. If you want, you can continue." The mermaid continued to watch her but shifted ever so slightly. Its tail seemed to loosen up a tiny bit, though it was still tense. "No?" Fareeha gave Mercy a highly overemphasized smile that was supposed to be comforting. "That's fine, then."

As her voice trailed off, the mermaid seemed to sit up a bit more, but still remained resting on the floor of the tank. Now that Mercy was in the water, Fareeha noticed how much prettier the creature looked when it wasn't obscured by a fishing net. Instead of being stuck to its neck, Mercy's blonde hair seemed to frame around its face and head, very gently flowing through the water with every slight motion it made. The dorsal fin was still pressed flat to its back and ears still pressed back against its skull - body language Fareeha was starting to associate with fear and unease - but the golden scales that adorned the mermaid's tail and body seemed to be shining even in the mediocre lighting of the lower deck. In fact, the entire tank seemed to be glowing with Mercy inside, casting a blue aura of light onto the boxes and crates that were the only other object in the room.

Honestly, it wasn't surprising mermaids were sought after for their beauty - Fareeha was staring it straight in the face. They were stunning creatures. She briefly imagined what it would be like to see a group of them out on a reef, or even just swimming alongside a boat; it would be breathtaking for sure. Almost certainly more appealing than one lone mermaid sitting on the floor of an empty tank. She almost wished there was something more she could do for Mercy, something she could give it to bring even a little bit of life to the dreary atmosphere in the small storage room.

"You are going to make someone very happy, that's for sure," Fareeha said to herself more so than the mermaid. For a moment, she thought she saw an emotion flash across Mercy's face - confusion, perhaps - but it was gone so quickly that she was sure she imagined it.

"I'd explain what I meant, but you can't understand a word I'm saying to you, can you?" She gave Mercy a small smile, as the creature just stared at her silently, its expression somewhat harsh. Yeah, it was going to make someone happy, alright. Someone who would put it on display for the rest of its life, however long that may be. For a moment, the mermaid looked like it may have been considering actually getting off the floor, but that was when the door flew open with a crash.

"Well, ain't this a surprise," a voice saturated with a southern American accent suddenly droned from the doorway. "Didn't figure I'd find ya down here." Without waiting for an invitation, Fareeha's first mate joined her, standing beside the box she was sitting on. Jesse McCree looked like something out of the deep West - complete with a cowboy hat, boots, even chaps, one of his bottomless supply of cigars already hanging out of his mouth. He looked like someone who belonged in a tavern brawl rather than the first mate of a merchant ship. He also seemed largely obvious to the mermaid, who had turned to look at him. "It's normal to find Hana or Lucio down here hidin' from their jobs, but I expected better from the Captain."

"Don't you have a crew to be waking up?" Fareeha asked, still not looking at him.

"Don't you have an entire ship to be running?" he countered without skipping a beat.

Fareeha cracked a smile. "Maybe I decided that this was a part of my morning routine. There's not a whole lot you can say about that."

He chuckled. "Now, don't tell me I'm gunna have to tell the rest of the crew that their Captain is enamored with a fish. That wouldn't look very good on ya."

"You're probably right," she hummed. "I think that would look downright fishy."

Jesse tried not to groan, but half-failed and the noise he made from deep in his throat was one of the most disappointed sounds she had ever heard a human being make. "You outta be shot for that."

"I think that would be considered mutiny."

"The crew would understand."

"Try explaining that one to Lucio," Fareeha laughed. "Just walk up to him and tell him you shot the Captain over a pun. I'm sure that'll go over beautifully."

"It would give him somethin' to do for a change besides play that damn guitar of his." Finally, his eyes shifted to Mercy. "So what exactly _are_ you up to down here?"

"I'm just trying to get it to calm down a bit," she replied, also looking at her mermaid. "It's still pretty stressed out."

"What did ya expect?" he asked. "I imagine the thing has never seen a human before. They tend to keep to themselves and avoid the surface."

"How on earth did they capture this one, then?" She looked back to Mercy, who's gaze kept shifting between herself and Jesse, never really changing. It was just watching with an unreadable expression. This mermaid was not brave; that was something that was painfully clear to Fareeha. It was skittish and easily startled by sudden movements; hell, them even being around it seemed to absolutely terrify it.

"That's a good question," he muttered. "Ya probably won't like this answer, but I dunno."

Fareeha looked over to him, eyebrow raised. "You don't know? You're the first mate. It's your _job_ to oversee the top deck every day."

"Well," he droned, "if ya must know, I was below deck taking a shit when it happened. Figures, eh?" He let out a snort of laughter. "Your crew is pretty damn impressive if they can pull that off so quickly."

"Why didn't you just have them throw it back?"

"Wasn't my call to make," he said dismissively. "I figured you'd hear all the commotion and come up to boss everyone around anyways, so I went down to the kitchen to steal a biscuit in the meantime."

"Remind me why I pay you," Fareeha said with a roll of her eyes. If this wasn't standard behavior for him, she probably would have been more exasperated, but it was nothing new for Jesse. "If you actually did your job, I wouldn't have an anxiety-stricken dangerous beast on my ship right now."

"Eh, they never calm down," he commented, shaking off her concerns. "Even ones that have lived in tanks for years are skittish things."

Fareeha cocked an eyebrow at him. "So, what, you're an expert on mermaids now, too?"

"I've seen plenty of 'em. Back when I used to run with Overwatch, I did a lot of dealing with a clan in Japan who used to capture the things by the pods. Made millions doing it, too. They had like three living in their property in Hanamura." Jesse paused to finally meet Mercy's gaze. "Fancy, glorified fish is all they are, but people pay stupid amounts for 'em." He looked back at her. "You plannin' on selling this one here?"

Fareeha tried to ignore the way Mercy's eyes shifted to her in the next instant, as it understood what was being said, as if it was watching her, waiting for her answer. Judging her. "I'm not sure what else to do with it," she answered, only briefly glancing back at the mermaid. "It bit one of the deckhands when they pulled it on board, so it's clearly too dangerous to-"

Jesse snorted at that. "Dangerous? Fareeha, I ain't never seen a mermaid do worse than bite an idiot that came too close for comfort. Once, one sang someone to sleep because they were tappin' the tank and it was annoyed."

As if to prove a point, he began to loudly rap the glass. Mercy's ears shifted slightly and it closed its eyes, something close to a grimace marring its features.

"Don't do that," Fareeha snapped. "I'm trying to get it used to being around people. You're not helping."

He gave the glass one last knock, which earned him an actual glare from the mermaid. "This one here don't have much of a spine, does it?" He chuckled. "It's got a pretty face, at least. The colors on the tail are a bit bland. I've certainly seen better. But I suppose it'll do if you do decide to sell the thing. Anywho," he gestured to the doorway, "do ya wanna head up? It's about high time we got movin'."

Fareeha mirrored his movements, giving Mercy one last forced smile before the two of them left the mermaid alone.

"What were you doing down there anyway?" Jesse asked as they began to navigate through the lower decks.

Fareeha sighed. "I just want it to be more comfortable. It's going to be a long trip from Australia and then back to Europe. I can't have it nearly having a panic attack every single time someone steps into that room."

Jesse looked back at her, a small smile turning the corner of his lip upward. "You seem to care an awful lot about something you want to sell."

"I'm worried about the crew, not Mer-" Fareeha stopped herself mid-sentence, realizing she almost referred to the mermaid by the stupid name she had given to it. "The mermaid," she finished.

"Sounds like that mermaid has a name," he snorted.

"I don't want it hurting anyone," Fareeha snapped, and even to herself, it sounded incredibly defensive. "If it's not comfortable, it'll get stressed out, and if it's stressed out, it's more likely to lash out-"

Jesse held up a hand, cutting her off and stopped both of them directly in front of the stairs to the main deck. "Ya don't have to explain yourself, Fareeha. I get it. I was never much of an animal person myself, but some people get attached to 'em."

"I'm not-"

"If ya want to get the beast to trust you, I reckon food would be the best way. The fastest way to get an animal to like you is to feed it."

Fareeha arched an eyebrow at him. "Do you think I have time for things like that?"

Well," he laughed, "ya certainly seemed to find time to stand around talkin' to it this morning." He just smirked at her when he noticed the glare she gave him, but otherwise ignored it. "Either way, the thing has to eat. They can go longer than people without food, but you gotta give the job of feeding it to someone if you don't wanna do it."

Fareeha paused to think about that. Truth be told, she hadn't even considered what kind of living arrangements a mermaid would need to survive, but they were looking at a timeline of two months at least before they got back to Germany. If Mercy's needs weren't tended to well enough in that time span, it almost certainly wouldn't survive the trip. As it was now, the mermaid was absolutely miserable - scared and miserable. She could see it in the creature's eyes and body language every time she came anywhere near its tank. Perhaps food would help, but she couldn't help but feel that Mercy was physically uncomfortable in what was essentially an empty glass cage - a far cry from the ocean. There wasn't a whole lot Fareeha could do about how cramped it probably felt, but maybe there was something she could do to make the temporary habitat a little more bearable. Could animals lose the will to live? She had heard some creatures didn't adjust well to captivity. Were mermaids among those?

"Do you know what they eat?" she finally asked, biting back the guilty nagging sensation at the back of her mind.

Jesse paused to scratch at the stubble on his chin. "They can be a might bit picky."

Fareeha arched an eyebrow at him. "Are they?"

He nodded. "I believe most of 'em like ribs, but only if they come from a cow. They hate pork. Gets stuck between their teeth." The captain was already fixing him in a glare, but he didn't even react to it. "They also like 'em prepared a certain way. Ya have to barbecue and smoke it for three days, then salt and leave it to dry out. Sometimes they-"

"Are you done?"

Jesse shrugged. "You were the one who asked. I was just answering ya." He must have been able to tell from the harsh look on Fareeha's face that she was no longer in the mood for his sarcasm because he sighed. "Just throw some fish in there. They may not be to its liking, but it ain't gunna starve itself."

With that, Fareeha nodded. "I'll find something. You go do your job."

Jesse tilted his hat to her. "Always the fun one you are, Fareeha." As she climbed the stairs to the top deck, she could hear Jesse's loud, droning voice waking up the crew the same way he did every single morning: "It's high noon."


	3. Chapter 3

Rumors were an unavoidable part of existing that people just learned to live with, but that didn't mean Fareeha cared for them in the slightest. They created nothing but tension and red-hot emotions that were almost impossible to temper. And when you lived with the same group of people for months at a time, completely isolated from human contact besides each other in an environment that required constant trust and cooperation with each other, they were damn dangerous.

Everyone on her crew knew how Fareeha felt about rumors, and how quickly she put an end to even the smallest whisper of one. However, the tension between two deckhands who had a disagreement over had to clean the latrine out at the end of the night was far different than an entire staff being unsettled by a dangerous animal that was imprisoned on the bottom deck. Mercy had been on board with them for about a week, and the mermaid really hadn't calmed down in the slightest. Every time anyone stepped into the room that contained it, the mermaid would retreat to a far wall and curl up until it was left alone. As disappointing of a display it made, Fareeha was starting to feel sorry for the animal. She knew nothing she could do would make it happy - that ship had long since sailed - but it was starting to feel cruel to keep Mercy in a situation where it was so terrified of _everything._ And the fact that the crew was equally scared of it just meant that the mermaid was a constant source of fear and unease on her ship, and that was something she wasn't going to have, not on a job that was going to lead them to such a dangerous environment.

Even worse, they still hadn't found anything the mermaid would actually eat. So not only was she failing to keep her crew calm, she was also failing to make sure that the animal she had agreed to cage was properly cared for. Mercy wouldn't even entertain the idea of so much as touching the salted pork and beef they had tossed into the water with it. Fareeha had no idea what caused it; if it was the taste, the salt or the texture of a meat it had never eaten before, but the look on the mermaid's face the first time it had tried pork had been almost comical. It had grimaced like a child taking a tonic, and glared at her for a solid ten seconds as if reprimanding her for even daring to get it to eat something so vile. After that, they had tried beef and even salted fish filets, but the mermaid had refused to even try it.

Her last-ditch plan for feeding the stubborn mermaid was to pull fish out of the ocean and just toss them into the tank, scales and all. There was one member of her crew, in particular, Fareeha knew would have enough free time on her hands to catch a few fish. She might not particularity _enjoy_ the prospect, but it had to be done. First, she would need to find Lucio, as she was sure Hana would be nearby.

The fact that Fareeha actually found the ship's medic in the medic bay was legitimately surprising to her. It wasn't like their crew got into many situations where medical attention was necessary; they mostly kept Lucio on board in the case of emergencies and illness. He was much more frequently found below deck doing anything he could to help with other menial tasks. His full name was Lucio Correia dos Santos, and he was a somewhat of a musician on top of being incredibly knowledgeable about medicines and remedies. Usually, the Brazilian man spent his time keeping the crew's spirits uplifted with his bottomless pit of positive energy and the two instruments he always had with him more so than actually filling his role as a medic. Lucio wore a simple white v-neck t-shirt and white pants under a black coat, white gloves and a pair of black shoes. On his left upper arm, Lucio also had a simple white band with a red cross on it.

Not surprisingly, the Raptora's chief engineer, Hana Song, was also in the room. There was nothing in particular unique about what she wore; just a white shirt, pants, gloves and thigh-high black boots like most of the deckhands, though hers were noticeably stained from the somewhat unhygienic job she had of keeping the ship's bilge chamber empty of stagnant water. Hana was another member of the crew whose job didn't keep her especially busy - she'd walk the ship and make sure that nothing was in need of repairs twice a day, and clean out the bilge every week or so, but other than that, she too had a lot of free time on her hands. However, unlike Lucio, Hana very rarely offered to help others outside of her main duties; she was much more often found playing with the deck of playing cards she always seemed to have on her person, or one of the various board games she kept stored under her bed in the sleeping quarters. And that was exactly why Hana was about to be put in charge of providing food for their mermaid.

Lucio and Hana were almost perpetually joined at the hips. McCree liked to make a lot of jokes about how they were just neglectful and liked to shirk their duties, but Fareeha knew it was less due to laziness, and more due to the fact that neither of them had jobs that required constant focus and they also had a lot in common. They were friends with lots of free time on their hands - she couldn't fault them for that. Besides, they were both damn good at what they did. There was a reason that the crew never had a single death on board the entire time Fareeha had been captain, and why technical issues with the Raptora were almost nonexistent.

As they noticed her presence, Lucio gave her a good-natured smile and a small wave before turning back to look at the deckhand that was sitting on a chair in the small room. It was the same man that had been bitten by Mercy the day it had been captured. By the looks of it, Lucio was just checking up on the injury and making sure it hadn't gotten infected. As Lucio wiped the area of dried blood away with a wet rag, the full extent of the injury became painfully clear. The bite had been far worse than she initially thought - it was long since no longer bleeding, but the man's skin had been absolutely ripped through. The indention over every individual tooth could be seen carved into his flesh. Fareeha was definitely taken aback by just how bad it looked - Mercy had barely held onto him for more than a couple seconds. It had seemed like a warning bite more so than an actual attack, but it had done more than enough damage to leave the sailor scarred.

Hana raised an eyebrow as she saw the injury. "That thing really messed you up, didn't it?"

"Yeah, laugh it up," he snapped at her, wincing as Lucio applied a bit of pressure to clean out the wound. "I didn't see anyone else moving a muscle to restrain the damn thing."

Hana gave him a smirk. "Maybe nobody else was stupid enough to touch a growling wild animal until after it wasn't capable of biting? That seems far more likely to me."

"Like I was supposed to know it was going to attack me. Everyone says that mermaids are smart."

"Clearly it was smarter than you."

The man glared at her. "You're such a little-"

Lucio held his hand up, cutting him off. "Alright, alright. We're not arguing in my bay. This is an aggression-free zone." He moved his arms in a wide arc over his head. "We are here to heal."

Fareeha didn't want to interrupt their medic while he was working with a patient, so she quietly stood by the door to the makeshift bay until he was done and had sent the sailor on his way. Hana threw out a few remarks every now and then, but apart from that, it was mostly silent. Once the man had left and it was just the three o them, Lucio gave Fareeha his attention, most likely assuming she was looking for him.

"How can I help you, Captain?" Lucio asked, giving her one of his signature smiles as he removed the slightly bloodied gloves from his hands.

Fareeha returned his smile. "Actually, I was looking for Hana."

The Koren woman arched an eyebrow at her, as it was not very often that anyone went out of her way to look for her, much less their captain. "Is something wrong?"

"In a sense," Fareeha replied. "You've heard about the mermaid we captured, I'm sure." They both nodded. "We're having problems feeding it. It doesn't seem to be going for anything we have so far offered it, so I was thinking it might want fresh fish."

Hana arched an eyebrow at her. "And?"

"And, you're not busy, so I want you to go catch something."

The engineer's face didn't change in the slightest, as she stared at Fareeha like she was waiting for a punchline. "You're joking, right?"

"Do I look like I'm joking?" she deadpanned, giving Hana a very stern glare. "I don't have anybody else with enough free time to be in charge of something like that, and it's becoming necessary. The mermaid is going to starve to death if we don't find something for it to eat soon." Fareeha's voice softened, as she tried to go for a less forceful approach to the conversation. She was going to get her way regardless, but she'd rather not have to act like she was forcing her to do something. "It's a really important job, Hana. I-"

" _Fine_ ," she finally grumbled jumping down from the table she was sitting on. "I'll meet you on the lower deck with your stupid fish."

As Hana stalked off to do what she was told, Lucio looked at Fareeha, face contorted into a frown. "The crew has been talking about that mermaid a lot. They've been saying she's dangerous and really worked up."

"Well, they're not wrong about that," she sighed in response, rubbing the back of her neck. "You saw what it did to that deckhand. It's definitely not harmless, though I doubt it has any capacity to actually hurt anyone from inside that tank. I think it's more scared than actually threatening."

Lucio frown deepened. "Still? It's been well over a week."

"I'm hoping feeding it might get it to ease up to us, if even a little bit."

Lucio hummed in response, brow furrowed, before looking at her once more. "Would you mind if I had a look at her? I think I might be able to help."

As he spoke, he moved over to a corner of the room where Lucio's two most prized possessions rested against a wall: the instruments he used to keep the crew entertained during their long months out at sea. One was a drum he had brought from Brazil with him, black and red in color with numerous insignias and symbols adorning the sides. The other was an oud, an oval-shaped stringed instrument that was brown in color. They were traditionally only found in Africa but Fareeha had bought it as a gift for Lucio years ago and, although he preferred the drum most of the time, he was just as skilled with both instruments. After a moment, he swung the oud over his back with the straps he had added to it and gave Fareeha a nod.

"Lead the way."

* * *

"Here it is." With those words, Fareeha leaned against a wall next to the door, arms crossed as she peered into the tank.

Mercy was lying on the floor of the tank when the two of them entered. Its golden tail was curled up around its body, and the mermaid's blonde head rested on the end of its fin, eyes staring ahead, looking at nothing in particular. Clearly, the creature heard the sound of the door opening, because Mercy's tail slowly uncurled itself as it looked at them, still resting it's entire stomach and chest on the glass floor, being supported only slightly by forearms that were pressed against the bottom of the tank. Like always, Mercy's dorsal fin and ears were laying flat against its body. Blue eyes stared at them as Lucio stopped to stare in return at the creature that he had only ever heard stories about.

He stepped toward the tank, face completely awed as he started at the cryptid. "She's absolutely beautiful." Something about Lucio's voice seemed to catch Mercy's attention, as its ears shifted slightly at his words. The mermaid didn't move from its position on the ground, but its eyes were now focused entirely on Lucio, expression far less tense than any look that it had ever given Fareeha. Finally, Lucio turned his own eyes away from Mercy's. "Does she have a name?"

Fareeha shrugged. "It doesn't speak, so your guess is as good as mine. I don't think it's capable of communicating with us. If it does have a name, it hasn't told me what that may be. I've just been calling it Mercy."

"Mercy?" Lucio rolled his eyes. "Did you name her that because she bit someone? It's a good thing your family legacy wasn't being comedians because otherwise, you'd be the family disappointment of a century."

"Har, har," Fareeha deadpanned. "The next time we drag a mythological creature onto the deck of my ship, I'll consult you before giving it a name."

He gave Mercy a warm smile. "Don't worry about it, we've all been victims of her in some way. I have to listen to her stupid puns, you get a stupid name. We're all on the same boat here." He leaned a bit closer to the glass and pretended to lower his voice. "I'm sorry if you don't like the name Mercy. I know I definitely wouldn't. But she's the boss and I don't want to get fired." Mercy was by that point sitting up, arms only slightly supporting its torso as its golden-yellow tail laid out behind it on the sheet of glass. The mermaid's eyes bore into Lucio's own brown ones, but Fareeha couldn't help but notice that the expression on the creature's face was significantly different than anything she had seen prior to that before. All of the previous negative emotions - the fear, the wariness, the unease, the sadness, even - seemed to have vanished, replaced by something close to curiosity. Mercy was studying Lucio, watching him carefully, but something about him seemed to put it at ease. "So, how about it?" he asked, voice as naturally friendly as it would have been if he had been talking to any random friend of his. "What's your real name?" Mercy's eyebrows moved, knitting slightly, but still, the mermaid said nothing.

"Mercy it is, then," Lucio said with a smile.

Fareeha gave a very slight roll of her eyes. "I could have named that thing Bilgerat and it wouldn't have made a difference. It can't communicate with us."

That time, Lucio actually frowned at her - a look that Mercy shared with him when the mermaid's eyes also shifted to Fareeha. "Do you think that means she's stupid? I don't." He looked back at Mercy once more. "In fact, I'll bet that she's very bright."

"It's an _animal_ , Lucio." Fareeha tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice, as she definitely had not bought Lucio to meet Mercy just to be lectured over how intelligent he thought the cryptid was. It was an animal, at the end of the day - it may have looked partially human-like, but that was just a facade, a ruse used to lure people into a false sense of security so that it could turn on them later. She had seen it behave like a predator with her own two eyes. All she cared about was making sure Mercy survived the trip back to Germany safely and in good health, so they could go their separate ways and she wouldn't have to worry about the beast again.

"And?" His eyebrow arched. "So are dolphins and whales. Nobody questions that those animals are smart. Just because they can't talk to us, doesn't mean they don't speak their own languages. Hell, not even all humans can communicate with each other. Being able to speak isn't a fair way to measure a creature's intelligence."

"This one is a girl, right?" he asked after she stared silently at the mermaid for several, not really having a reply for what he suggested. Fareeha knew he was right, that there was indeed a possibility Mercy did hold some degree of intelligence, but so far, she had seen almost nothing to suggest that intelligence might have been present.

That, and she really didn't want to think about the fact that this particular, potentially intelligent, mermaid had nothing to look forward to for the rest of it life besides gawking humans and glass walls.

"I have no idea," Fareeha answered honestly, her tone somewhat sharp. "This one is the first of its kind I've ever seen. How the hell do you expect me to know the difference between a male and a female?" She looked back at Mercy for a moment. At the very least, it's features were feminine. "If we're basing it off what humans look like, I'd guess it's probably female, but what difference does that make?"

Lucio shrugged, ignoring the somewhat snippy tone to her voice. "I just think it's weird how you keep calling her an 'it'. If she can understand us, I imagine she doesn't appreciate that."

"I'll keep that in mind," Fareeha retorted. "In the meantime, I'm more concerned over the fact that this animal is completely disrupting my crew because they're all afraid of it sinking the damn ship."

"Let me try something," he suggested, shrugging out of the straps that held his oud against his back.

"Are you sure that won't just scare it more?" the captain asked skeptically.

Lucio gave her a somewhat offended frown. "If it does, I'll stop. Trust me, she looks like the type that can appreciate music." When Lucio moved to sit on the crate that was closest to the tank, Mercy shifted towards the back of the glass just a bit, staring directly at the instrument in his hands, expression shifting back to unease.

The medic gave it a good-natured smile. "You're gonna love this, Mercy."

Lucio crossed his legs on the box and began to strum at the strings of the oud, filling the small room with a soft, familiar melody that Fareeha had heard hundreds of times over the years that she'd spent at sea with the musician. The smile didn't fade from his face as he stared Mercy dead in the eyes, waiting to see how it reacted to the new sensation of music. Somewhat to Fareeha's surprise, the sudden noise didn't seem to scare the nervous animal any further; in fact, it seemed to have the exact opposite effect.

At first, Mercy's head tilted to the side slightly, ears snapping forward in a way that seemed involuntary as it watched Lucio. However, no fear or unease showed in the mermaid's eyes - merely a curiosity, and a lot of it. With a powerful kick from its golden tail, Mercy lifted its body off the floor of the tank for the first time Fareeha had seen since the mermaid had first been placed in the glass cage. Fareeha felt her own eyebrows raise at the motion, somewhat surprised by the way the usually timid mermaid was acting.

Lucio, however, was beside himself with the attention Mercy was giving him. Slowly, the mermaid was moving closer to the front wall of the tank, watching his oud through eyes that absolutely shone with fascination. Never once did Mercy's gaze shift from Lucio and Lucio returned the mermaid's curiosity with an ear-to-ear smile and he would occasionally change songs and beats, or melt melodies into new fusions that not even Fareeha had ever heard before. He was clearly experimenting for the sake of the animal and not everything sounded incredibly pleasant, but Mercy seemed to absolutely adore the noises. Fareeha couldn't help but smile at the scene; Lucio had been on to something, clearly. His music had put the animal complete at ease, if only temporarily. Still, it was a start.

Lucio's spell broke when the door opened once again, and Hana entered, carrying a small box that she plopped down on the ground directly behind the crate he was sitting on.

"Alright, I got your damn fish. Happy now?"

Fareeha ignored the tone to her voice. "That depends on if Mercy likes them or not."

For a few seconds, Hana said nothing, eyes instead focused on the mermaid that Fareeha had drawn attention to. Much like Lucio, it was the first time she'd ever seen Mercy or any other merperson. Awe was the first thing to show on her face. However, it was somewhat short-lived as she quickly approached the tank. The sudden movement completely destroyed all the confidence Lucio's music had given the mermaid and in the blink of any eye, it's tail had propelled it back to the far side of its glass enclosure, where it watched Hana carefully.

Hana let out a small snort of laughter. "Not very brave, is she?"

"She was fine a second ago," Lucio replied, a small smile on his lips. "You just scared her."

Hana hummed in response as she stood directly in front of the glass, studying the mermaid. Mercy returned her look, though Fareeha got the feeling that the tranquility Lucio's music has brought it was still lingering, as the animal didn't look afraid so much as startled. Even as it was watching Hana, it seemed to have calmed down a bit.

"Let's try to feed it now," Fareeha suggested, stepping toward the box that contained the fish. "Hana spooked it a bit, but we're better off not opening the tank when it's tense." Bending over, the captain picked the box up and sat it down directly in front of the tank. She pushed one of the crates closer to the glass so that she could stand on it and reach the locked lid on the top.

Mercy just watched her silently, tail twitching ever so slightly as Fareeha revealed that the box contained fish. Clearly, the mermaid recognized the carcass in her hand, because Mercy immediately perked up in a way that it never had when she had offered it the meat from their storage. The captain caught its expression and gave the mermaid a smile. Maybe they had finally found something it would actually eat.

Carefully, she climbed onto the crate so that she was standing over the tank, fish in hand. Fareeha hesitated to undo the latch keeping the tank locked shut, as she was very aware of how vulnerable she would be if Mercy decided it wanted to grab her and drag her into the water. She could potentially be dead before anyone would even be able to get to her. Brushing off that rather horrifying thought, Fareeha peered down into the tank below. The mermaid was still resting in the lower corner of the tank, so that made her feel marginally less worried about it.

Finally, she opened the lid to the tank, looking down directly into a pair of familiar eyes, very careful to not lean anything else but the edge of her face over the open space of water.

With a smile, as she dropped the dead fish. It floated along the water's surface and Fareeha quickly closed the lid once more, latching it shut before stepping off the crate she was standing on. Mercy definitely looked interested in the fish; its eyes were torn between the carcass and her face, fighting between the natural instinct of hunger and wanting to be leery of her.

Fareeha stepped back and sat on the box she normally did, watching the mermaid patiently. "You can eat," she said softly. "It's not poisoned. I'm not going to hurt you."

Mercy hesitated for a few moments but eventually seemed to give into hunger and slowly moved forward through the water. Never once looking from Fareeha, the mermaid reached out for the tuna, grasping it with claw-like fingernails, before sinking razor-sharp teeth into the fishes' head. At first, Mercy's motions while eating somewhat resembled how a human would do so, but that changed abruptly mere seconds after the first chunk of flesh and scales had been ripped off from the rest of the fish.

Fareeha wasn't sure if it was merely the taste of meat, or if that was just how merfolk normally ate, but in a second, Mercy went from holding the fish in its hands to hanging the entire thing out of its mouth, thrashing its head back and forth like a shark, creating a cloud of blood to billow out from the center of the tank. As more debris and entrails were created, Mercy would occasionally pause to eat the bits of meat floating around it. Even a series of soft, subtle muffled snaps could be heard as the mermaid ate bones. When all that remained was a spine, the mermaid took the bone back in its hands and stripped the last pieces of meat and scales from it before shoving the remains to the top corner of the tank.

As she watched the unexpectedly violent display, Fareeha's smile had faded. This mermaid was truly an enigma - she had never seen anything like it in her life. It seemed prone to snapping at the drop of a pin. One second it would be cowering in the corner of a tank, and the next it would be disemboweling prey with all the savagery of a bull shark on a feeding frenzy. It was clearly not defenseless - it had claws and teeth that could easily strip flesh to the bone. And yet, she couldn't help but think that about that deckhand, how Mercy had merely bit him, then immediately let go. It could have easily torn his leg apart, but it didn't.

As Fareeha sat on the crate with her elbows resting on her leg, she gave the mermaid a somewhat scrutinizing glare. It was like every time she thought the creature was showing something close to intelligence, something else happened to make her doubt it. The creature was certainly expressive and it had emotions that showed clearly on its face, but the same could be said for a dog or a cat, and they most certainly were not what most people would classify as 'intelligent'. The idea that it was just concealing some greater sentience seemed stupid to her.

When Mercy looked at her once more, Fareeha noticed that it's expression had changed. Its blue eyes were somewhat less scared - wary, yes, but not terrified.

"What?" she asked as if it was actually going to answer her. "Do you want something?" After a few seconds of silent eye contact, Mercy's blue eyes drifted to the wooden ground beside Fareeha. Raising an eyebrow and ignoring how the mermaid seemed to be directly responding to her words, the captain followed its gaze, only to see that the mermaid was looking at the box that she had pulled the tuna from.

Ah. It just wanted more food. She should have known better than to think it was actually communicating with her.

She let out a small chuckle as she stood up. "Alright." Fareeha pulled another fish out and climbed back on the crate. The mermaid was almost too close to the surface for her to be fully comfortable with it, so she was very careful to stay back as she opened the lid to the tank once more. The second the fish hit the surface, however, Mercy rushed forward, blonde head brushing the top of the water. Despite the distance Fareeha kept between herself and the glass, the mermaid was still only an arm's length away from her. The sudden movement startled her so much that she lost her footing and fell backward off the crate, creating a loud crash that reverberated throughout the small room as the top of the tank slammed shut.

A curse tore from her lips as she rather ungracefully fell on her ass. Her face twisted in a pained grimace for a few seconds. She sat up slowly, hand resting on the back of her neck as her eyes still scrunched up.

"Damn, that hurt," she muttered, more to herself than anyone else. For a second, Fareeha had forgotten that she had been the source of three sets of eyes, but that changed very quickly when laughter from both Hana and Lucio rang very loudly in her ears. Ignoring how she could suddenly feel her dark skin blush bright red in her own indignant embarrassment, Fareeha instead shot a glare at Hana, who was definitely the louder of the two.

"That was a smooth win," she snickered. "I give you an eleven out of ten. Really, a-"

"Don't you have something to be doing?" she snapped.

"Yeah, feeding your mermaid."

"I didn't even think your voice _got_ that high-pitched," Lucio commented with a grin.

"Just wait until McCree hears about this," Hana said, her face contorted into a smirk. "The mermaid made the captain squeal like a baby pig."

Fareeha picked herself off the ground, brushing dust off her pants and coat, still fixing Hana in a look that would have struck her dead if looks could kill. "Keep it up and you'll both be cleaning the kitchen and latrines for a week."

Hana rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right. We both know that we have better thing to be doing than something like that."

Fareeha's eyes narrowed. "Try me."

The captain turned her glare from Hana to the cage behind her when a muffled sound came from the tank. With a blink, she looked up at Mercy, who was covering its mouth with its hands as a few more of the same soft sounds could barely be heard from Fareeha's side of the glass. It was smiling at her - actually _smiling_ \- and its eyes were absolutely swimming with an emotion that could only be described as amusement.

Slowly, Fareeha approached the tank, her own eyes somewhat wide. The smile was still present on Mercy's face as it grabbed the second fish, but more so than the smile, Fareeha was trying to process the sound it had made.

That mermaid had laughed at her. Actually laughed. It had watched her trip backward, and found so much amusement out of the clumsy gesture that it had laughed at her. Her previous indignant embarrassment became nonexistent as she watched Mercy start to brutally maim the second half of its meal.

"Even the mermaid thinks you're a damn klutz," Hana snorted, but Fareeha ignored her, watching Mercy once again as it finished the last of its meal and moved back to the far wall of the tank, settling against the floor in a ball. There was still a trace of a smile on the mermaid's face as they stared at each other silently.


	4. Chapter 4

Mercy became Lucio's biggest fan, as far as he was concerned. In the days that followed his introduction to the mermaid, he spent almost all of his free time in the small storage room, playing music for the creature, who was absolutely enamored with his instruments, the melodies he created. Lucio had even begun calling it therapeutic, as just his presence alone had drastically improved Mercy's mood in a way that was almost hard to believe. No longer did the mermaid look at them with a wary fear - though it was far from calm and comfortable in the tank, it also no longer laid on the floor of the tank in a state of lethargic sadness. There was even a couple times where Fareeha walked in on Mercy spinning and twirling around towards the middle of the tank, but that was always when the mermaid was alone, and it always stopped the second it noticed her. It was always a beautiful, blissful sight, perhaps a small glimpse of the type motions the mermaid would be performing had it not been trapped behind four glass wall, and it always made Fareeha feel more than a little guilty to witness.

Even more surprising to her, however, was that Hana was taking an active interest in caring for Mercy. Hana wasn't exactly lazy; she just didn't go beyond her assigned duties as the Raptora's engineer. She began to get pickier about the fish she caught, always opting for bigger, fatter ones and throwing back the bonier specimens. She had also grown into a habit of changing the water in the tank daily, which was a long, tedious process that involved dipping bucket after bucket tied to a rope into the ocean, then carrying them individually down two sets of stairs to the storage room. It wasn't too far from her job of cleaning out the ship's bilge chamber, so Fareeha assumed she was well-accustomed to the monotony of it. With both Lucio and Hana doing such a good job of watching out for Mercy in their frequent free time, Fareeha found herself descending the stairs to check up on the mermaid less and less often, though she still tried to make it a point to stop by in the early morning.

That particular morning, the both of them were up before Fareeha was, already seated on crates piled around the tank. Mercy had its eyes closed, peacefully resting its tail on the floor of the front corner tank, back and dorsal fin pressed against a wall. Lucio was softly beating on his drums, creating a steady rhythm that permeated a calm atmosphere throughout the tiny room. Hana was sitting adjacent to him, doing something with some playing cards laid out in front of her, but Fareeha had no idea what.

Mercy's eyes opened when it heard the door open, which prompted Lucio, in turn, to look at her.

"You two are up early," Fareeha mused, leaning against the door frame. Hana grunted in response, still barely paying any attention to her at all, too focused on her cards.

Lucio just shrugged. "I figured she'd be awake since I don't think I've seen her sleep once, so I was giving her a bit of company before the day got going."

"That's thoughtful, but-"

Lucio held his hand up. "I know, I know. Other morning duties come first, playing music for the mermaid comes second." He stood up, tapping Hana on the shoulder as he moved past her. "Let's go, gamer girl. You have a ship to walk."

When Fareeha stepped outside shortly after making sure Mercy had enough to eat, the first thing she was greeted to was her first mate leaning over a railing overlooking the bottom half of the deck, looking down at her with a smirk on his face, cigar still hanging out of his mouth like it was attached to his lips.

"You done wooin' the fish?" he called down to her.

Fareeha tried to resist the urge to glare at him, and instead moved toward the ladder directly adjacent to the door she had just come out of. Upon reaching the top with McCree, Fareeha could also see that Lena was also standing nearby, one hand on the wheel that controlled the ship's rudder, while she watched the Captain with her familiar smile.

"I wasn't wooing a mermaid." Her tone matched the annoyed looked she was giving him, but he seemed to completely ignore it.

"I suppose that sounds about right," he droned, leaning back against the railing. "I don't suppose you'd be able to woo your way out of a paper bag."

To that, Lena let out a loud laugh. "I think we got a slight case of the pot calling the kettle black here."

McCree drew a long puff back on his cigar before looking at the navigator. "You think I don't know what women like, Tracer?"

"Do you want the honest answer, or do you want me to stroke your ego?"

"Enlighten me," he goaded with a small chuckle.

"I've seen more action from women in my weeks off than you have in your entire life, I can guarantee that."

He arched an eyebrow at her. "Woah, there. I need a doctor."

"I'd say that was brutal, but she's probably right," Fareeha commented, leaning against the ship's railing.

"Can't say much to her," he gestured to the captain, looking back at Lena "But I sure as hell can put you on kitchen duty for a few days."

Lena snorted. "Go right ahead, luv, if it helps you sleep at night better."

McCree opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by Lucio's sudden appearance.

"Captain," Lucio said, his face unusually grim, "I think you need to go down to Mercy's tank. That's been an...incident."

The way that last word hung in the air brought an immediate, heavy silence to the playful atmosphere that had previously surrounded the three of them. As if a switch had been flipped in her brain, Fareeha shifted to a much more serious demeanor, as she had trained herself to do for years.

"What happened?"

Lucio just shook his head. "I'm not sure. All I know is a few of the deckhands brought me a sailor that was half-drowned. Totally unconscious, drenched from head to toe. They said Mercy attacked him."

Fareeha blinked at him, not fully processing what he was telling her. The mermaid had attacked someone? How? The tank had a latch on it; there was no way to open it from the inside. And even so, Fareeha had specifically forbidden the crew to interact with the mermaid, exactly for the sake of their own safety. Lucio and Hana were the only ones allowed in the storage room beside McCree and herself - Hana because she had taken on a role as Mercy's caretaker, and Lucio because his music was almost therapeutic for the mermaid's emotional health. Deckhands weren't even supposed to go near it, let alone get attacked by it. And the entire crew knew how low their captain's patience was when she was blatantly defied.

"How the hell did it get out of the tank?" she finally asked, a part of her refusing to believe that she had been disobeyed so belligerently.

"She didn't."

"What do you mean 'it didn't'?" she asked sharply, her demeanor quickly shifting from surprise to very, very angry.

"Someone fell into it."

"Jesse," she beckoned, turning away from Lucio, not needing to say anything else to prompt him to follow her.

"I hear ya."

When Fareeha finally made it to the lower deck, all hell was breaking loose in the small storage room. There were at least three people in addition to herself and McCree already standing around the tank, and what she saw made her blood boil in a way that was very uncharacteristic for the usually-calm captain. The first thing she heard even before the door opened was the very pointed sound of growling and hissing, and when they actually stepped into the room, Fareeha was rather horrified to see that Mercy was no longer in the tank, but was on the wooden floor, tangled in a thin net. Three men surrounded the mermaid, whose dorsal fin was flared. The sailors stood on the ropes in a way that Mercy was tightly pinned to the floor, nets cutting into the skin of its back as it occasionally lurched around in the fibers, trying to appear threatening. Water pooled underneath the mermaid's damp body.

"What in the name of hell are you boys doin'?" McCree spoke up first, sounding just as angry as Fareeha felt. "Now, I'm not a mind reader by any means, but I seem to recall you bein' told to stay away from this room. Care to explain why you got that animal out of its tank?"

There was a long silence, where none of them said anything.

"Your superior officer asked you a question," Fareeha told them coldly. "Answer him."

"We had to take it out to save Peterson," one of them finally defended, trying not to shrink under the angry, penetrating glare of both his captain and her first mate. "It wouldn't let us down into the tank. He would have drowned."

"What was he doing in the tank in the first place?" Fareeha's voice was harsh. "Better yet, what were _any_ of you doing in this room in the first place? You're not even supposed to be down here, much less dragging that dangerous animal out of its tank."

Silence just followed her questions, as none of them had an excuse as to why they had directly disobeyed her.

"Fareeha," Jesse suddenly piped up from the other side of the room, to where he had wandered while Fareeha was chewing them out. "Take a look at this."

Fareeha turned her angry brown eyes to the tank, which McCree was looking into with an arched eyebrow. She, in turn, peered past the glass, to see that the floor of the tank was littered with wooden and metal debris that definitely had not been there the last time she had stopped by to check up on Mercy. Her own face darkened even more so at the realization of what those absolutely bullheaded deckhands had done.

"Were you throwing things at that mermaid?" she asked sharply.

"It tried to drown us," one of them grumbled. "Knocked Peterson out cold with its voice. And when we tried to help him out, it started snarling like a damn wolf."

"It's almost like it's a dangerous animal that you were told to stay away from," McCree said, sarcasm drenching his tone. "If you were stirrin' it up, I'd say you all earned a little dip in that tank."

"You've seen what that monster can do, haven't you?" was the heated reply he got. "It tried to kill all of us."

Fareeha finally turned her glare down to the creature on the ground that was no longer growling but rather was hyperventilating as Mercy struggled to breathe through panicked gasps of air, more so due to fear than an actual difficulty breathing air. When Mercy finally looked up at the human towering overhead, meeting her brown eyes, the mermaid recoiled heavily under her gaze, pressing itself as close to the ground as it feasibly could. Terror unlike anything Fareeha had ever seen in her life shown all too clearly on the animal's face. The mermaid's tense state was no surprise to her considering what kind of stress those idiots had just subjected the poor creature to.

"Good riddance, I'd say," McCree said, his icy tone matching the exact thoughts going through Fareeha's mind at how absolutely well they had traumatized the mermaid.

"Damn thing is a menace," one of them muttered, in a tone that was most likely not intended to not be heard.

"What was that, sailor?" she asked. "If you have something to say, say it. Don't lower your voice to me."

"They clearly don't belong around people," he replied, voice only growing marginally bolder.

"I didn't want this animal on board my ship in the first place!" she barked back, finally raising her tone of voice for the first time in longer than she could remember. "The entire crew disagreed with me because you all thought the money you'd make from selling this mermaid was worth the risk of having it on board." Fareeha laughed without humor. "Now, you're all going to have to live with that. You want to be afraid of it? Good. It reminded you of all the stories you've been told of merfolk since you were infants sucking on your thumbs. Spread the word that the mermaid on the lower deck is dangerous, by all means. Maybe you'll think twice before openly defying me again, hm?"

When none of them replied to that she waved them away. "You're all dismissed. Tomorrow morning, report to the front deck as normal and McCree will decide your punishment for such blatant stupidity."

All three of them gave her a half-hearted salute and muttered "Yes, Captain," in unison before leaving the room as fast as they could without running.

As they walked by, McCree drew back on his cigar. "Those boys were drunk as skunks. I could smell the booze on 'em from halfway across the room."

"That doesn't excuse anything," Fareeha grumbled, watching after them, trying to will herself to calm down. "I've never been drunk enough in my life that I'd think it was a good idea to climb down into a tank with a live mermaid and pelt it with pieces of wood." More so than just the fact that what they had done was stupid, Fareeha was more concerned with the type of damage they might have done with the progress Lucio had made with Mercy. The skittish mermaid had only just started to warm up to them - that could have been totally ruined by their actions.

And now she was faced with the very daunting task of lifting the terrified mermaid back up into that tank. A part of her had almost ordered the deckhands to do it, but she didn't want to put Mercy through any more contact with them than she had to.

As if on cue, Lucio quietly stepped into the doorway; he'd cleary been waiting form the outside. "Do you need help getting her back in the tank?" He gave Mercy a good-natured smile. "I am her favorite, after all."

"It would be appreciated," she replied, not entirely liking the idea of having to lift Mercy in the animal's current state; while the mermaid may not have been as uncomfortable around them as it had once been, to say it trusted them was a huge stretch. Mercy recognized and tolerated them, but that was about the extent of it. Fareeha approached the mermaid slowly, hyper-aware of the way it's wary blue eyes tracked her every motion. Not once breaking eye contact with the creature, she crouched down directly in front of the cryptic, pulling out a knife. At first, Mercy pulled away, but Fareeha quickly began to cut away at the ropes entangling the mermaid and once it realized that she wasn't planning on attacking it with the weapon, some of the tension left the mermaid's body.

"There," she said softly, pulling away the last of the ropes. "That feels better, doesn't it?" She received Mercy's usual silence as an answer. "Let's get you back in that tank." As she had been freeing Mercy from the twine, she had noticed that the mermaid's skin had almost totally dried, and it's breathing had become noticeably more labored. Fareeha had no idea how long merfolk could survive outside of water, as Mercy clearly possessed some kind of lung in addition to gills, but she assumed that it wasn't a very long time.

Fareeha tucked her arms underneath the mermaid's back, lifting it in a scooping motion, while Lucio assisted with Mercy's tail. McCree stood back, helping to direct them instead of actually touching Mercy, as he was nowhere near a friend of the mermaid's. While they slowly clamored up onto a crate and did the admittedly difficult process of lifting something the size of a grown man over their heads and into the tank, Fareeha couldn't help but notice the feeling of Mercy's skin against her own hands. It felt intimately human; she had always expected that merfolk's skin would be more similar to the rubbery texture of a dolphin, but it was like touching the smooth, soft, flawless skin of a baby.

Something about it sent chills down her spine and peppered her skin with goosebumps.

When they finally managed to hoist Mercy over the tank, it didn't immediately allow itself to sink to the floor, but rather folded its arms on the top of the glass wall, watching both her and Lucio intensely for a few seconds, blonde eyebrows knit as wide blue eyes studied them critically.

"Yes?" she asked. Mercy's brow furrowed even more for a few seconds, but it eventually dove under the water, going back to looking at them through the glass. As Fareeha shut the lid of the tank and redid the latch, frowning, she returned the unreadable look the mermaids was fixing her in. She had no idea what the cause of such an intense stare was, but she gave the mermaid a small smile. "I won't let those men bother you again. You have my word. Just put your seacurity in my hands."

Mercy cocked its head at her, but Lucio actually moaned, as if he was in physical agony. "I can't even take you seriously right now."

Within the hour, Hana installed a lock on the door.

Within nightfall, almost everyone on board the Raptora had fallen terribly ill. Lucio was the busiest he had been in five different trips, as he ran around trying to mix up remedies for an absurd amount of stomachaches and fevers and Fareeha wouldn't have been surprised if the vomit from the amount sailors that had emptied the contents of their stomach into the ocean had caused an environmental health hazard to the local sea life. After some digging around the kitchen, she had discovered the culprit: a meat barrel filled with some bacteria, that they had apparently eaten out of. She quickly disposed of it, but that was far too late to help those already suffering from the effects of the tainted food. By the time she normally would have gone to bed, she herself started to feel the effects of the sickness that had taken hold of almost her entire crew.

Hana was among those too sick to even go about her evening walk of the ship, so Fareeha took it upon herself to see to it that Mercy was fed that night. Lucio, somehow immune to the illness, had expressed his concern about the captain overexerting herself, but she insisted she was fine, that he was far too busy for something so simple, and she wasn't so sick that she couldn't drop a fish in a tank.

That was what Fareeha thought, until she actually tried to climb onto the crate she normally did, and her entire world began to shake in five different directions at once. With her mind clouded from the effects of the sickness, Fareeha's judgment had become just as muddled as she leaned over the tank, staring down at the mermaid below her. Holding the tank open with one arm, she dangled a fish over the water and dropped it in, she was only vaguely aware of the nagging voice at the back of her head reminding her she was in a very vulnerable position. Mercy immediately kicked upward from its spot in the back corner and moved toward her, giving her a smile before taking the fish and starting to eat. Fareeha grimaced slightly, not from the sight of Mercy disemboweling another tuna, but because of the throbbing headache that had accompanied her fever and stomach problems. Whatever sickness has taken hold of half of her crew was wrecking havoc on her as well, but she wouldn't set aside her duties as Captain for something so trivial. Still, she patiently waited until the mermaid was done with its first fish before dropping another.

As Mercy sunk its razor-sharp teeth into the second fish, the entire ground beneath Fareeha's feet gave a jolting lurch. Normally, she would have been able to react to it well enough. Rough patches of waves were commonplace for her; just a part of daily life. Normally, however, Fareeha would not have been leaning over the top of a large pool of water, balancing on a loose wooden crate with one hand keeping hold of a heavy lid, and while so sick she barely knew what balance was. As the ship shifted forward, she was suddenly surrounded by water, vaguely aware of a loud slam as the lid of the tank closed on top of her.

Somewhere through her feverish stupor, Fareeha was aware of the direness of the situation she as in; she forced her eyes open in the water, trying to ignore how badly the salt water caused them to burn. Everything was blurred and indecipherable, the familiar layout of the room on the other side of the tank becoming a mix of brown shapes and shadows that her eyes simply could not make sense of. Instinctively, she began to kick her legs to propel herself forward, however, she hit one of the glass walls, not even able to tell which way was up. In the next second, she felt something brush us behind her, and was jolted into remembering that she was not alone in the tank.

The mermaid.

Oh, _god_ , the mermaid.

The only image that filled Fareeha's panicked mind in that instance was the razor-sharp teeth the monster possessed, the way it stripped flesh from the bone, the fact that's tail would be infinitely more powerful than her awkward kicks. All it would have to do would be to grab her, to pin her against the floor of the prison that she had herself allowed the mermaid to be placed in, and she'd be helpless. She'd almost surely die to the animal's bloodlust. She'd-

 _NO._

Like _hell_ would she die on her own ship, to an animal of all things. _Like hell_.

She turned around as fast as she could to face the mermaid in the water, only making out a faint outline of white and blonde before she balled one of her hands into a fist and swung at the oversized fish with all her might. Something that sounded chillingly like a woman's gasp of pain came muffled to her ears, but Fareeha became unaware of what happened after that, as she was starting to feel the effects of a lack of oxygen in her lungs. Her headache was only getting worse, and precious bubbles of air were slowly seeping from her nose. Ignoring the potentially enraged mermaid, and tightly grasping her nose shut with a free hand, Fareeha kicked her legs again, moving in the direction that she prayed was upward.

In a few seconds, she came to the lid of the tank, but found herself unable to force it open; it was simply too heavy for her weakened body to lift. Before a new panic could seize her chest, however, Fareeha once again felt the presence of Mercy in the water directly next to her. However, before she could swing at it once more, the mermaid kicked her away, pinning her against the wall of the tank with its powerful tail. As she started to struggle, the mermaid wrapped her up in its arm, pinning both of her own arms against her body as a webbed hand carefully covered her mouth and nose.

Fareeha's eyes slammed shut, now totally at the mercy of the cryptic as all she could do in protest was kick.

As she resigned herself to her fate, air suddenly filled her lungs when she broke the surface. In shock, her brown eyes opened once more, to find herself mere inches from Mercy's blue eyes, as the mermaid watched with concern on its face. Mercy had released her arms, but still kept its own arm wrapped tightly around her waist, supporting her carefully as she caught her breath. Mercy's other arm kept the tank propped open, giving Fareeha a big enough gap between the water and top of the tank to potentially climb out.

Fareeha found that to be a daunting task, especially given how exhausted she felt, but as if reading her mind, Mercy gave her a boost by situating its tail underneath her legs, giving her something to stand on as she managed to clamber over the glass. There was no box for her to stand on where Mercy had lifted her out, but Fareeha nonetheless less allowed herself to fall to the ground, where she laid still for several long moments trying to focus on breathing and slowing down her racing heart.

After she found the strength to sit up again, she looked back at Mercy, who was still staring at her, one hand resting on the glass of the tank. For a long several seconds, Fareeha started at the mermaid's concerned blue eyes, her own expression intense over what had just happened.

When Lucio appeared in the doorway, Fareeha almost arched an eyebrow at him; he'd been quite useful with randomly manifesting out of thin air that day.

He blinked at her. "I noticed you were taking a while feeding Mercy, but..." he paused, noticing how soaked she was "Did Mercy attack you too?"

Fareeha glanced up at the mermaid once more, who still looked too worried about her to touch the fish still floating at the tank's surface. "No." she shook her head. "She saved my life."


	5. Chapter 5

That night was one of the most restless ones Fareeha had experienced in a very long time, and it wasn't due to her fever.

A small sigh passed her lips when the sun started to peak over the calm blue horizon of the ocean, as she leaned against a railing on the upper deck. She definitely wasn't completely over the horrible illness that had infected her ship, as she still felt a bit queasy. She knew it was a symptom of the bug lingering. Fareeha hadn't been seasick in well over two decades - she had been practically raised on a ship. Some of her earliest memories were watching sunsets on the deck of a boat with her mother when she was just a girl. A lot changed in thirty years, but her strong resistance to motion sickness from a boat lurching under her feet was most certainly not one of those things.

No, her restlessness was not physical. It was mental.

It wasn't often that Fareeha liked to look back on her decisions and question them, but the sensation that had been crushing her conscience for the better half of the last eight hours was unmistakable. It was guilt, it was doubt, and it all went back to that mermaid. She had just been lying to herself for the last two weeks about Mercy. She was smart. She was damn smart. The possibility had been nagging at the back of her mind for a long time, and she had never been able to put her finger on it until last night. The mermaid had shown legitimate problem-solving skills. Mercy had known she needed air to survive, she had held the tank lid open, she had boosted her out of the tank with her tail. There was no way Fareeha could ever tell herself again that Mercy was unintelligent.

That, and the fact that she had saved her life when she had an opportunity to brutally drown her. A huge part of Fareeha wished that Mercy could speak, because she would love to know why. Why the hell would a mermaid save her life? She was a human, the human that had ordered her to be placed in the tank in the first place. Mercy most likely knew that nothing good was to come from it - she still seemed tense, even when Lucio was around. And yet, Fareeha found herself still alive. She had escaped the literal grasp of a mermaid completely unscathed. Confused and feverish, perhaps, but unharmed.

It was jarring. It went against every story she had ever been told about merfolk. They were cunning enchantresses. They were deceitful and murderous. They despised humans. They weren't kind, they weren't compassionate, they didn't have feelings. They just killed. Much like the ocean itself, merfolk never showed mercy.

And yet, her mermaid had.

Fareeha was snapped out of her thoughts by the sound of footsteps net to her. Lena was slowly shuffling her way towards the highest point of the deck, stifling a yawn as she tried to brush her unruly brown hair into a shape that didn't look she had just crawled out of bed. It utterly failed, but if she cared, the navigator obviously didn't care enough to fight with it.

"That's why I just tie mine back," Fareeha commented as Lena took her usual spot at the ship's steering wheel.

Lena just shook it off. "I can't be bothered. The wind is just going to knock it about."

"Fair enough." For a few seconds, silence fell over the two of them, as Lena began running through her morning routine to help her get her bearings: making marks on her map, peering out over the water with her various tools, all the while humming a tune that Fareeha did not recognize. "You certainly seem chipper this morning," she commented.

"I didn't fall ill last night," she replied.

"What makes you so special?" the captain asked, giving her a good-natured smile.

"I can think of quite a few reasons," Lena snorted. She held up a finger. "First and foremost, I'm the anchor on this mess of a ship."

Fareeha rolled her eyes. "Of course, Lena. We'd be simply lost without you."

"Literally," she replied with a smirk. "You and McCree have the combined navigational skills of a leaf."

Fareeha arched an eyebrow at her. "That's being a little harsh, don't you think?"

Lena hummed in response, scratching at her chin, pretending to be deep in thought. "I suppose you're right, luv. Even a leaf can be guided by a proper breeze. I'd say you two are more like a dead tree stump. Stationary. Stuck in its ways. Stubborn as all hell to rem-"

"Have I ever told you that you boost my ego by at least five percent every time I stand near you, Lena?" Fareeha chuckled. "Really, it's a gift. You should have been a motivational speaker. Shame you decided to become a navigator with a big mouth."

To that, Lena let out a loud laugh. "You were the one that asked, Cap'n. I am simply answering you. Though," she paused to laugh to herself again, "I imagine the real reason I avoided the illness was because the cook has a crush on me."

Fareeha just arched an eyebrow at her. "So Emily is trying to poison the rest of us? Is that what you're telling me?"

Lena's face darkened considerably, all playfulness leaving her tone in an instant. "Maybe that's a real possibility. Try asking her?"

"I'll get right on that," she replied, a small smile on her face as she leaned back against the railing behind her once more.

"So," the navigator prompted, looking back at Fareeha from the corner of her eyes, "I hear you weren't so lucky."

Fareeha grimaced. "It wasn't pleasant."

"I heard you got so fever drunk that you took a dip with the mermaid."

Fareeha had to quickly compose herself to hide the flash of annoyance that those words caused. Apparently, it took less than a few hours for rumors like that to spread. "That's not what happened," she said sharply.

"That's not what McCree told me."

"McCree is getting dumped off at the next island we set foot on," the captain replied, already feeling a headache forming.

"Shame the nearest island is a busy port, Lena snorted. "It'll be a tad bit difficult to strand your first mate there."

"Believe me, I'll find a way," she muttered.

Lena chuckled. "Were you still planning on making a stop there?"

Fareeha nodded. "We have to, now. I had to throw a lot of meat out last night. We're low on supplies. We can stay in port for a day or so, give everyone a chance to stretch their legs on land before we set out for Australia."

Lena gave her a small salute. "You got it. I'll set course for that direction."

* * *

As Lucio was still busy with the lingering effects of the tainted meat on numerous sailors and Hana claimed she was still as sick as a dog, Fareeha decided to feed Mercy herself that morning. When she entered Mercy's room, the mermaid was in a back corner of the tank. Her golden-orange tail trailed out behind her on the floor, as she pressed her forehead against one of the sheets of glass facing the wall on the storage room, one hand balled into a fist that rested against the glass right beneath her scaled chest, her dorsal fin pressed tightly to her back. Fareeha paused, noting that the posture was somewhat bizarre, but she didn't immediately question it. Mercy surprised her every single she laid eyes on the creature, so she was beyond questioning most of the mermaid's actions. Mercy's ears twitched toward her ever so slightly when Fareeha closed the door behind her, showing that she was aware of the captain's presence, but the mermaid didn't budge.

"I brought you some breakfast," she said. Without waiting for a response, which was something Fareeha had long since accepted she would never get from Mercy, she sat the bucket on the crate she usually used as a ladder. "Hana isn't feeling well this morning, so I suppose you'll be stuck with my company today." When she finally looked back up at the tank, she saw that Mercy still hadn't budged; her eyes just seemed to be shut tighter than they had been before, lips pursed as if forcing her mouth shut. She almost looked like she was in pain.

"Mercy," she said, trying to keep her tone even despite the small panic rising in her chest. "Are you alright?" Something was clearly wrong, but she didn't have the slightest idea what. Finally, the mermaid turned to look at her, webbed ears still pressed flat against her temple. Mercy's expression was absolutely overwhelmed with sadness, not unlike the level it had been the day she had been dragged upon their ship. She didn't even attempt to give her the tiny ghost of a smile she normally did. However, the drastic difference between that day and now was that her ocean-colored eyes were tinged with a red puffiness around the outside. The resemblance was identical to that of a crying person. For a few seconds, Fareeha found herself weighing around a curiosity over the fact that mermaids were even capable of crying, but that sensation vanished as fast as it had hit her, suddenly replaced by a spine-chilling realization that made her face fall and her blood run cold.

Mercy was crying.

Mercy was crying because of her.

Mercy only watched her for a few more seconds before she tore her blue eyes from Fareeha's brown ones, and tucking her face against the back corner of the tank, tail curling up around her, as if trying to bring herself comfort. Fareeha just stared at Mercy for several seconds, trying to formulate her thoughts.

"I-" she started to say, but she stopped herself. She wasn't sure what she was going to say to the mermaid. 'I'm sorry', perhaps, but that just seemed like it would add further salt to her wounds. What could she say? What did she have a right to say? It was her fault Mercy was even in the damn tank in the first place. If she had just put her foot down in the first place, if she had forced her crew to just throw her back into the water where she belonged, Mercy wouldn't even be here right now. But, no, she had allowed herself to be selfishly convinced otherwise, to let a desire for profit and her own want to observe the mermaid influence her decision to imprison a creature who was clearly both self-aware and peaceful. Mercy wasn't dangerous to humans. She was wary of them, but it didn't take a lot to see that was because they had torn her from her natural habit, her home, and stuck her in an empty cage. Of course she was wary of them. Of course she was scared.

A day ago she would have questioned Mercy's likelihood to snap and attack any number of sailors aboard the Raptora, but Fareeha had been the one to order the mermaid's captivity and even after that, the mermaid had spared her life. Nothing had been preventing Mercy from drowning her last night. Nothing at all. She had been in the mermaid's grasp, completely helpless and alone. The only thing that had prevented her death had been Mercy's own, well, mercy. And not only did she not kill her, but she also helped her escape the tank safely.

Despite that, here they were. Mercy was still confined to four glass walls, fated to be dragged ashore, where she'd spend the rest of her life confined to four slightly larger glass walls. Whoever bought her would pay no attention to the way she reacted to every word spoken around her, how expressive her eyes were, how they absolutely shone with personality and intelligence. They would see nothing more from her than a pretty blonde-haired blue-eyed fish.

What a great way to thank someone for saving your life, isn't it, Fareeha?

What could she even do for the mermaid at this point? Well, that was easy. She could just set her free, but she wasn't sure she was prepared to deal with the backlash such an action would cause. When she finally looked back up at Mercy, she saw that the mermaid hadn't budged from her closed-off position. Wordlessly, Fareeha climbed the crate and opened the lid of the tank to dump two fish into the tank.

"Come get something to eat when you're hungry," she told Mercy, her tone flat even to her own ears. "I'll leave you alone. I clearly don't belong here right now." She paused, staring down at the mermaid from the top of the tank. Apologizing definitely seemed like an empty gesture, but not saying something felt very wrong, and it would continue to eat away at her conscience until she said something. A sigh passed her lips, as she closed her eyes and dipped her head forward. "I don't even know if you can understand a word I'm saying, but I must thank you for last night. You saved my life. I don't know why you did so, but I'd surely be dead now if not for your actions." She opened her eyes, watching the mermaid. Mercy tilted her head up towards her, watching her silently in return. "I thank you for that, sincerely. You're much more intelligent than I ever gave you credit for, and I apologize if I ever offended you."

By the time she was back on the ground, Fareeha looked at the tank again for just a second, expecting to see Mercy ignoring her, however, to her surprise, she found herself staring directly into a pair of beautiful blue eyes, the same color of the ocean. Her eyes were only slightly tinged with redness, seeming to imply that she had stopped crying at least several seconds ago. For a long few moments, Fareeha just returned the mermaid's somewhat mournful look, completely transfixed by the gentleness in her expression. With a furrowed brow, Mercy slowly pressed one of her palms against the glass of the tank.

Fareeha just gave her a small smile, keeping her own hand firmly down at her side. "How about I send Lucio in? Would you like that?" Maybe she was just lonely; usually, she had Lucio or Hana to keep her company in the morning. Lucio would probably be able to cheer her up more than she could.

Her brown eyes widened as Mercy then shook her head in a very clear, distinct gesture that was unmistakable. The shock must have shown on her face, because Mercy's own lips turned upwards in the smallest ghost of a smile. Fareeha arched an eyebrow at her in response to that.

"Alright," she said, tone far less exaggerated than it was when she usually spoke to Mercy, "so you can understand me?" The mermaid reached up to brush some of her flowing hair away from her eyes, but otherwise just watched her.

A chuckle escaped Fareeha's lips, as she backed up from the tank and sat on a crate. "I'm a patient woman, you know. I can wait for an answer."

Mercy settled down on the floor of the tank, mocking her actions with a look on her face that could only be described as a smirk. Great. Now the mermaid was giving her attitude, too.

Not wanting to ruin what was the closest the mermaid had ever come to communicating to any of them, Fareeha returned her smirk with a smile. "I'm going to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind. Just nod your head," she demonstrated the gesture by jerking her head up and down, "for 'yes', and shake it for 'no'. Do you understand?"

Mercy stared at her for a few seconds, but eventually tilted her head forward.

Fareeha's smile grew ever so sightly. Finally, she'd have a chance to actually get a glimpse inside the creature's mind. She could only answer yes or no questions, but maybe she could learn something about Mercy that would help make her happier.

"While you're on my ship, I don't want you to be unhappy." Mercy's expression was largely unreadable at those words. "Everyone who sets foot - or tail, in your case - on the Raptora gets treated with dignity and respect. I want to help you. Do you like being left alone down here?"

Mercy shook her head 'no'. So, she was lonely. That seemed obvious.

"Okay." Her smile didn't fade. "Do you like the fish we give you?"

Mercy's lips twitched upwards every so slightly as she once again shook her head.

"Do you have a preference for something else?"

A nod.

Fareeha frowned, unsure as to how to go about learning what that preference might be, but she brushed it to the side. She'd work it out later.

"We'll find something else for you, then." Her smile faded and a small sigh passed her lips before she asked her next question. "Are you uncomfortable in there?" She already knew the answer before she ever asked it, but the small nod Mercy gave her in response still brought a strong pang of guilt to her chest.

Before Fareeha could reply, the door flew open once more, prompting both herself and Mercy to shift their attention to the newcomer.

McCree gave her a smirk. "Thought I'd find you down here," he droned, leaning against the frame of the entryway. "Tracer said you came down to flirt with the fish."

"Ikhras," she snapped at him. "We're having an important conversation, and I'd certainly appreciate it if you didn't ruin it."

Jesse held his hands up, as if she had a gun pointed to his chest. "You shoulda said that it was important. Don't mind me. I'm just here to watch love unfold. Gotta make sure you don't commit any unholy acts with a mermaid."

Fareeha turned from Mercy to give him a full glare, as he finally strode across the room to come up to the glass of the tank. "How you doin', Fishsticks?" he asked, addressing Mercy directly, which earned him a venomous glare from the mermaid. "You bored to death yet?"

"Don't you have something to be doing?" Fareeha snapped at him.

"I was looking for the captain of the ship, actually." He drew back on his cigar and puffed smoke in the direction of the tank. "I figure she'd probably has better things to be doing than talkin' to a mermaid."

"Well, she doesn't." Fareeha's tone was flat. "She is in the middle of something and as long as you're down here, you're going to make yourself useful."

Jesse arched an eyebrow at her. "Me? Useful? I figured you'd know me better than that after all these years, 'Reeha."

Fareeha ignored him. "What do mermaid tanks normally look like?"

Jesse arched an eyebrow at her. "Excuse me?"

"Mercy told me that she's uncomfortable. You told me that you used to work with mermaid hunters." Fareeha tried to ignore how much harsher Mercy's expression became when she revealed that small aspect of her first mate's history. "What do people normally put in tanks with mermaids to make them happier?"

"Happy," he echoed with a snort of laughter. "That's a stretch." He looked up at the mermaid. "From what I've seen, mermaids are nest builders. I reckon in the wild, they sleep on some kind of plant. The Shimadas always used to give 'em blankets to lay on. That's about the best you can do now, I figure." He looked back to Fareeha. "They also like places to hide and sand and rocks along the bottom, but that's not exactly something you can get your hands on right now. An old blanket will tide her over until we get back to Germany."

Fareeha nodded in understanding. "I'll be right back."

Jesse arched an eyebrow at her. "Where are you going?"

"To get a blanket."

* * *

Fareeha knew that buried somewhere in their storage they had extra bedclothes, but she had no idea where exactly, nor did she have any desire to dig around for them. Instead, she returned to her cabin, and grabbed one of the unused quilts that were stacked among her clothing. As she passed one of her desks, her eyes caught sight of a book she had almost forgotten she had. It was a guide for fish that lived in the oceans of the world. She had picked it up years ago, in the off chance they ever had to rely on baiting and killing fish as a food source. She debated on leaving it there, but eventually picked it up, an idea forming in her head over how to pin down Mercy's preference when it came to the fish she ate.

McCree was still hanging around when Fareeha made it back to the storage room. Mercy was still glaring at him, so the captain assumed that they most certainly had not kissed and made up yet. She sat the book on the ground by the door and stepped up on the crate to open the lid of the tank.

Much to her surprise, when Fareeha opened the tank, Mercy broke the surface, poking her blonde head and shoulders out of the water. Fareeha almost dropped the lid back on her head by accident, but composed herself quickly enough to spare Mercy a concussion. Mercy, however, completely ignored her, and instead looked over to McCree, who was leaning against the glass of the tank. With a look that could only be described as pissed, she moved along the top of the tank, until she was directly over top of him. With a powerful kick from her tail, she created a small wave that rose up from the tank and absolutely soaked him. He slowly turned around, fixing the mermaid in a glare that would have struck her down in half a second if looks could kill. Mercy folded her arms on the rim on the tank, leaning on it, and gave him a smirk. Fareeha would have paid money to see the look on his face the instant the water touched him, but instead let out a laugh.

"I don't think she likes you, Jesse," Fareeha commented, dropping the blanket into the water.

"I don't think I like her, either," he replied.

Mercy's response to that was to kick another wave of water directly in his face.

Fareeha tried to stifle her laugh that time and it came out in a snort. Mercy looked over to her curiously, obviously new to the sound, and she just shook her head. "Enough of that." She tried to make her voice sound stern, but she found that rather difficult when she looked back down to her first mate, who looked like he wanted to shoot her. Fareeha closed the top of the tank slowly, forcing Mercy back down into the water, and locked the latch.

"Oh, yeah," Jesse grumbled, "that'll really learn her."

Fareeha arched an eyebrow at him. "What, do you want me to throw her overboard?" Jesse just stalked away, fuming out the door. In a way, it was very out of character for him, but Fareeha couldn't help but smile. It wasn't very often Jesse got angry; pissing him off was truly a talent. When she looked back up at the mermaid, a small chuckle passed her lips. Mercy was back in the corner of her tank, ears pressed flat against her skull, dorsal fin flared, as she stared harshly at the top of the tank, where the blanket was floating.

"Mercy," she said, prompting the mermaid to glance at her, "it's not going to hurt you. Try laying on it. I'm sure you'll find it more comfortable than the bottom of that tank."

Mercy tore her eyes from Fareeha's brown ones and back to the blanket, still looking like she was debating on tearing it to shreds with her teeth, but she eventually kicked her tail, propelling her body slowly through the water. When she made it to the surface of the tank, the first thing she did was poke at it with her index finger. Mercy recoiled ever so slightly when it shifted, but her head titled nonetheless. As wary as it was making her, she was also very curious about the strange new object; Fareeha could see it in her face as her ears perked up somewhat. It was interesting, to think that something so commonplace to her as a blanket, was something so alien and curious to Mercy.

Finally, she grabbed it, gently nudging it toward the bottom of the tank, watching with curiosity how it moved. Very quickly, her fear of the blanket was replaced with interest, as she experimented with moving it around in the water around her, playing with the physics of it. Eventually, she wrapped herself up in it and sunk to the bottom of the tank, where she poked her face out from under it, wrapping her tangled tail around her body.

The entire time Mercy stared at her from under the blanket, she was smiling, and Fareeha found herself not only returning that smile, but never wanting to see it fade. She wanted to see the mermaid happy; seeing her smile and swim around and not lying lethargically on the floor of the tank made such a drastic difference in the very atmosphere that she gave off.

"I've got another surprise for you," she said with a small smile, sitting on the crate touching the front of the tank. Out of curiosity, Mercy approached her, blanket still wrapped around her body, and floated in the water right behind her. She held the book up so the mermaid could see it.

"This is called a book," Fareeha explained, opening up to a random page, that showed a lot of words and a picture of a brightly colored angelfish. "It's how we humans record our written language and how we pass down our stories and histories from generation to generation." She looked back up at Mercy, who had one palm pressed against the glass of the tank, eyes absolutely transfixed by the book. "This one here is about fish," she continued. "Let's find out what kind of fish you like to eat, shall we?"

Mercy nodded without hesitation, eyes never once leaving the text in her hands.


	6. Chapter 6

It was well past noon by the time Fareeha finally tore herself away from Mercy's company, much to her bewilderment. The time spent with the mermaid in the storage area of the ship had passed much faster than she could have ever imagined; it was only McCree coming below deck to tell her that Lena had caught sight of the port they were planning on resupplying in that she finally put the book away and forced herself back under the sun to oversee the landing. She truly had completely lost her track of time, but Jesse seemed more amused about the situation than he seemed actually annoyed.

It had been an interesting process, going through the book page-by-page, carefully watching Mercy's reaction to each intricately drawn image of fish, hoping to get an idea as to what her presence was when it came to hunting. After several hours - five, to be exact - Fareeha had come to the conclusion that Mercy was partial to cod, herring and shellfish. She'd see what she could find at the marketplace, but she imagined that there would be a plethora of live specimens she could simply dump into the tank with the mermaid, so they wouldn't need to worry about preserving them. Mercy might even enjoy the prospect of hunting her own food; it would probably alleviate some of her boredom.

When Fareeha stepped out onto the deck with McCree, they both casually leaned over the railing on the highest point of the deck, having a clear sight of all the deckhands starting to prepare the Raptora for docking.

"So Hanamura, eh?" he asked, gaze somewhat distant as he watched the approaching land. "Interestin' choice."

Fareeha tiled her head slightly to look him. "Is it, now?"

"I'd say so." He drew back on his cigar. "Never expected to be back here."

"What, Japan?" Her voice took on a familiar teasing tone. "Afraid your Japanese is out of practice, Jesse?"

Jesse snorted. "I wouldn't worry about that too much. Song can always help out there."

Fareeha arched an eyebrow at him. "Do you know anything about the people who work on this ship?"

"I try to make it a point to learn as little about them as possible." He gave her a smirk. "Anything that'll make you expect more out of me is a no-can-do." He tapped the end of his cigar on the railing of the ship, dropping bits of ash into the water below. "Next I suppose you'll be wantin' me to sit below deck and talk to a fish for five hours."

Still resting her chin on her hand, a small smile turned her lips upward. "It's a good thing I'm here to educate you then, isn't it?" She ignored his other comment. "Hana is Korean, not Japanese. I'm afraid we'll be relying on your expertise this time around." She grimaced. "Truly a terrifying thought."

Jesse tipped his hat to her. "No doubts there, but that ain't what I'm worried about. I figured I'd be haulin' my ass back to Japan at one point or another. Just never thought I'd ever be comin' back to this settlement, is all."

"You've been here before?" she asked, interest only mildly piqued. They weren't planning on docking in Hanamura for more than a day or so; just enough for the crew to stretch out their legs, get some real food, maybe spend the night in a hotel somewhere. McCree having a history with this area was somewhat helpful, but not exactly necessary.

"I've sure as hell been here before." His tone was somewhat less easygoing than normal, which caught Faeeha's attention. With a frown, she stood up straight, watching him carefully. He returned her serious glance with a small laugh. "It ain't exactly a dangerous area, but there might be a bit of hassle when we do land. There's a clan 'round here that controls the area with an iron fist. Shimada is the name. I used to work with them quite a bit back in my Overwatch days They personally search every damn boat that comes through port here and usually 'confiscate' certain items."

Fareeha arched an eyebrow at him. "What kind of items are we talking about?"

Jesse waved her concerns off. "'Nothin' we're carrying today. They're more interested in contraband. Prefer to sell it themselves." He drew back on his cigar again. "They're a well- known criminal family, but nobody has the balls to piss 'em off. Besides, they're in deep with Overwatch. I can guarantee they won't give us any problems, so long as you just give 'em their way." He paused for a second. "Though I can promise you that someone will take an interest in your pet."

"You mean Mercy?" She asked, still frowning.

"Nah. I mean the phoenix I pulled out of the water about ten minutes ago.'"

She ignored the joke, suddenly somewhat concerned about the idea of docking at this particular settlement. "Are mermaids considered contraband in Japan?" She tried to keep her tone even, to mask her growing apprehension. It wasn't that she was worried about breaking the law so much as she was worried about the idea of Mercy falling into the hands of some crime lord. As far as she knew, there were no laws preventing the capture and sale of merfolk in any country; they were considered a novelty internationally, a true gem of the ocean that only the luckiest sailors would ever have the opportunity to hunt.

Judging by the small smirk Jesse gave her, she saw right through her mask. "Not in the slightest, but the Shimada clan got their start as mermaid hunters. If there's a captive mermaid in all of Asia, it's likely that it was captured by their them. They were still at it, last I knew, but you know how rare merfolk have become over the last couple decades." He paused to reposition his cigar in his mouth. "I wouldn't worry about it too awful much, Fareeha. They'll likely offer to buy her off you, but there's no way in hell they'll be able to steal her off your ship."

Fareeha's lips tightened, her voice growing somewhat cold. "I'm not sure I want to sell her to a group of criminals."

"'Course not," he replied, smirk still in place. "You love her, gotta make sure she goes to a nice family who loves her and coddles her and raises the fish like their own flesh and blood."

"We could always just dress you up in a tailfin and sell you instead," Fareeha suggested. "Free the real mermaid and give them a loud-mouthed knockoff substitute."

Jesse let out a loud snort of laughter, leaning over the railing again. "Go right ahead. I'd fetch you just as much as any real mermaid, darlin'."

"If you ever call me that again," Fareeha immediately deadpanned, joining him at the side of the boat, "I'll make you wish you were in the same place as that mermaid."

Jesse smirked at her. "What, don't like to be on the receiving end of the pet names, Fareeha?"

"Not coming from you, at least." Her lips turned up in a ghost of a smile. "I'd prefer someone with some level of charm gave me pet names and not some dirty cowboy who I gave a job to out of pity."

His expression didn't waver in the slightest. "You sure it wasn't my pure rugged western charm?"

"Positive."

"How positive are we talkin'?"

"I'd walk over shards of glass to prove to you just how serious I am right now, McCree." He snorted in laughter, but said nothing else. "You know you're more like a drunk uncle to me than anything even slightly resembling charm."

"I'll take it." With that, he stood up once more and clapped his hands loudly, gaining the attention of a group of deckhands standing on the lower part of the top deck. "Land ho, boys, let's get this piece of driftwood ready for landin'!"

While Jesse instructed the landing crew on the upper deck, Fareeha went back to her quarters briefly, changing out of her formal work clothes and into a more comfortable white shirt and pants. She had quite a few things she had to take care of before they left tomorrow morning. Some of it wasn't going to exactly be glamorous, so she felt it would be appropriate.

The port of Hanamura was no more or less busier than Fareeha expected; there were about a dozen ships moored in the harbor, a bustle of activity along the stone docks, a familiar scent of sea salt mixed with food from the local bars and restaurants, a buzz of noise, mostly in a tongue she recognized as Japanese but did not speak herself. Standard, really. Her own crew was quick to take off once the Raptora's gangplank had been dropped, while most of them spoke about hitting a local tavern. She was the last one to step off the ship, only preceded slightly by Jesse, who didn't seem to be in as big of a rush to leave.

He didn't exactly seem uneasy, but definitely seemed to be watching for something as his eyes scanned the crowds around them with more scrutiny than he normally would have given. Fareeha assumed he was watching for someone, most likely one of the crime lords he had already warned her about. After only a few minutes on land, they were approached by a Japanese man with dark eyes, thick eyebrows, and, oddly enough, green hair the same color as seaweed that sometimes drifted to the surface of the ocean. Even stranger than that, however, was that Jesse seemed to recognize the stranger.

A smile cracked across his face. "Well, well," he droned, "if it isn't Genji Shimada. I'd recognize that stupid hair of yours anywhere." The man he had called Genji just blinked at him, very clearly not recognizing him, and not even attempting to hide his confusion. McCree let out a snort of laughter. "It don't surprise me that ya don't remember me. I worked more with your brother anyway." He drew back on his cigar, holding his hand out. "The name's McCree. Jesse McCree. I used to help out with some of Overwatch's more sensitive dealins' with your clan."

As Jesse spoke, Genji just watched him, clearly trying to remember what he was talking about, but he eventually shook his head. "I apologize, but I do not remember you." Regardless of his words, he took Jesse's hand in a small handshake.

Jesse brushed it off. "Doesn't surprise me much. I seem to recall you spendin' more of your time entertaining women while Hanzo did the dirty work."

Genji let out a laugh to that, clearly not at all offended by the implications of his words. "It sounds like me. Hanzo never understood that women just can't get enough of me. It's a heavy burden I carry, being the attractive one." As he spoke, he gave Fareeha a smile, one that was so painfully flirtatious and forcefully alluring that it made her nauseous just looking at it. In her worldwide travels, the captain had met men and women of all shapes and sizes, of all walks of life, of all social classes, and she liked to think of herself as a somewhat patient person, but the one thing had she no time for was men like him. Frivolous rich men who would bed three women a night, and thought that every woman on the planet would walk into his bedroom after so little as a smile, were by far the worst group she had ever encountered, and were unfortunately as widespread as the waste left behind by seagulls resting on a ship. First impressions, her mother had always told here, were very important, and her first impression of Genji Shimada was that she hated him. He absolutely reeked of privilege and it immediately put her off.

"Are you no longer associated with Overwatch?" Genji asked, looking back to Jesse.

"Nah. There was a bit of internal fightin' and I wanted no part of that. Nowadays, I'm the first mate of this ship here," he gestured to the boat behind him, "and this here is my Captain."

Fareeha forced a smile, trying to act at least somewhat friendly, as she also took Genji's hand in a shake. "Fareeha Amari."

Genji nodded at her, clearly under the impression that Jesse had been in charge until right that second. "Then you are the one I must speak to, Captain." That smile didn't fade. "My brother and I are in charge of this port, and we have a policy for all foreign ships who wish to dock here." Fareeha swore for a second she heard Jesse chuckle, but ignored it. "We're just going to run a quick search of your ship," Genji said coolly. "It shouldn't take more than a half hour or so. My clan simply wants to ensure that illegal substances aren't smuggled into Japan from our own port. I'm sure you understand that."

Fareeha fought the urge to roll her eyes, and instead nodded her head. "Perfectly understandable," she replied, making sure her face remained expressionless as to not give away her mental scorn of the man, "as long as you understand that I will be accompanying you on this search." For a second Genji faltered, clearly not expecting that demand, and Jesse let out a louder, definitely more pointed snort of amusement.

"I assure you that is not necessary, Miss Amar-"

" _Captain_ Amari," she corrected him coldly.

Genji let out a soft chuckle that made it all too clear to her that she was wearing as thin on his patience as he was on hers. "Captain Amari," he echoed. "My mistake, I apologize for disrespecting you. Captain, I assure you that this is just a standard procedure for all foreign ships that pass through Hanamura. It is nothing to worry yourself over." He gave her another one of his sickly flirtatious smiles. "Go to a pub, get something to drink with your crew. Enjoy your time here. I-"

Fareeha held up a hand to silence him. "Mr. Shimada, I'm not here to sightsee." Her tone was as icy as her face.

"You can call me Genji."

"I'd prefer not to," she said bluntly. "Spare me the pleasantries, Mr. Shimada. I will fully submit to this inspection of yours, but you are no friend of mine. Don't act like you are." Genji's fake mask of friendliness had very quickly twisted into a smirk that he tried to hide. "You are a stranger to me," she continued, "and you will not set foot on my ship unsupervised."

He simply nodded. "Very well." He moved towards the Raptora, waiting for at least one of them to follow him.

Jesse stepped closer to her, frowning. "You want me to stick around 'til he gets bored? I can put off the booze for awhile."

Fareeha just shook her head. "I'll be fine."

"You sure?"

"Positive." She glanced at the scrawny young man. "He's just a flirt. I could break him in half with my thumb."

To that, McCree snorted. "Try not to. I don't feel like organizin' a jailbreak."

Fareeha would certainly try her hardest, however, when Genji gave her another one of those stupid smiles of his, she knew that physical assault wasn't out of the realm of possibility.

* * *

This, Fareeha quickly decided, was the most contrived excuse for a 'search' that she had ever seen. It was certainly nothing new for her; she had been subjected to random searches for contraband many times in the past. That was just standard when you made a living out of carrying goods by boat for other people. However, Genji did none of what would normally happen in such a search. He completely ignored the boxes Overwatch had placed on board, which all bore their iconic orange-and-white logo printed on the sides, and searched for no hidden panels or compartments, like every other search she'd ever submitted to in the past had. It seemed like he was more interested in merely seeing when she had on the ship in the first place.

And of course, seeing Mercy's locked door on the lower deck made him demand to see what was on the other side.

Genji took several seconds to draw any attention to Mercy. Fareeha briefly glanced at the mermaid, who was looking at the pair of them, confusion etched on her face over Genji's presence, but only held her stare long enough to give her a tiny ghost of a smile. A part of her was hoping that if she also ignored Mercy was there, her obnoxious visitor would as well. That was clearly not to be, as very shortly after his eyes passed over a few of the crates, he came to look at the mermaid. Mercy seemed marginally bolder than she would have been in the past when an unfamiliar person approached her tank, but Fareeha could see the unease Genji was bringing her all too well. As he stepped closer to the glass, she in turn slowly inched toward the far wall, eyes never leaving him once.

"Well, now," he said, tone keeping that staged friendliness that Fareeha had quickly come to detest, "that's a surprise." He turned to look at her. "I haven't seen a mermaid in quite a while." Fareeha didn't reply to that, just kept her face straight. "She's quite beautiful. Vibrant tail, bright eyes, long hair. Tell me, where is she bound?"

"I'm certain that is none of your business." Her tone was as sharp as a knife.

To that, Genji let out a laugh, probably the only genuine reaction she'd gotten out of him since he had first introduced himself. "There's no need to get so defensive, Captain. I am merely inquiring for your own benefit."

"Are you?" she asked flatly. "

"I am."

"Kathab," she muttered, mostly under her breath, but if he heard the foreign word, he chose to ignore it.

"I know you aren't transporting such a creature for Overwatch," he said, tone blunt. Genji leaned against one of the crates pressed against the wall. "Overwatch is a group of mercenaries, not a zoo. The weapons I expected, the mermaid is clearly not part of your contract with them." He smirked at her, face dropping all the previous hammed-up friendliness in a second. "My clan is very well-acquainted with Overwatch, Captain, and I know you're withholding information from me."

Fareeha returned his smirk with a glare. "You are obligated to know nothing about where the goods on my ship are headed. I was under the impression that you wanted to inspect it for contraband, not to nose around in my work."

Genji shook his head. "You misunderstand my intentions, Captain."

"Somehow I _highly_ doubt that," she countered back, refusing to buy into his facade.

"I ask only because I'd like to know how much longer you plan to carry her on your ship. Merfolk are very sensitive to their environments. They become prone to illness if not stimulated properly, they can easily lose their will to live if they become lonely enough, and some even take their own lives if they feel unsafe. I certainly hope you have not been holding this mermaid in such conditions for any long period of time, because, well," he paused to glance back at Mercy once more, "its nothing short of abhorrent."

Fareeha's expression didn't soften in the slightest, though his words did bother her slightly. Mostly because she saw nothing in his face, nor heard anything in his tone of voice, that implied he was being anything besides genuine. That made her stomach churn. He saw nothing in Mercy beside her value, how much money she would make the person who sold her. If what Jesse had told her was true, this man had spent his entire life surrounded by merfolk. Mercy had made her intelligence more than apparent to her after a mere three weeks of interaction, and she was the first mermaid Fareeha had ever even seen, let alone interacted with. All those years of experience Genji had, and he still only saw them as a financial asset, and not a living creature. Or perhaps he did, a voice in her head screamed. Perhaps he did, but just didn't care. That idea was more disturbing to her than she would have ever cared to admit.

"It would certainly be a shame if such a valuable mermaid was lost due to neglect." Genji seemed oblivious to her growing anger. "Our clan would be more than willing to buy her off you today, to lessen the burden of carrying her on board your ship."

There it was.

"She's not for sale," Fareeha said sharply, her words coming out before her mind had even processed them. Subconsciously her brown eyes drifted over to Mercy, who was watching the pair of them, unease very prevalent on her face. However, at her verbal refusal to sell her, the mermaid's ears shifted slightly, moving from their downwards slant, as she blinked her wide blue eyes in surprise. Fareeha tried to ignore the guilt that such a small gesture brought her, and instead turned her gaze from Mercy and back to Genji.

He frowned. "I can assure you that my clan would never lowball you on something like this. We are well aware of the value that these creatures hold." He turned back to Mercy again. "This one was not caught in these waters, was she? She looks different from the merfolk that I've traded in the past. Colors are lighter, features are quite clearly western. She's an oddity around here, even for a mermaid. Exotic. She's worth far more money here in Japan than she will be when you leave Asia. Millions, at a bare minimum." He gave her a smile, clearly ignoring her biting glare. "I'm sure we can come to an agreement on a price."

"She's not for sale," Fareeha repeated, voice colder than it had been in a very long time. "I'm not interested." Money was the last thing on her mind when she considered the idea of selling an intelligent living thing into a life as a gloried goldfish, but Fareeha opted to keep that comment to herself. Clearly, someone who had grown up in a coddled environment of wealth and status like Genji Shimada had would have no concept of such a thing.

Finally, a sigh. "I understand."

Fareeha's hunch that this entire ridiculous waste of her time masquerading as a 'search' was an excuse just to nose around her cargo hold to see what she was carrying was confirmed to her when Genji went through only five crates in Mercy's room before declaring that he had seen enough.

As the two of them crossed the gangplank to once again stand on a dock, Genji spoke to her one last time. "Thank you very much for your time, Captain Amari. I hope you enjoy your stay in Hanamura."

"Thanks." Her tone was curt.

Before he walked away, he handed her a small slip of paper. "If you change your mind about the mermaid before you leave, feel free to contact us."

She took the paper begrudgingly, refusing to look at it until after he walked away. It had an address printed on it. "Not a chance," she muttered, tearing it into several pieces before dropping it in the water right next to her ship.

The very second she got, Fareeha made her way to the port's marketplace, glad to be rid of her unwanted company. She would have to buy some more meat to replace the supplies she had thrown out, but she was also interested in seeing what live fish the local fishermen were selling. She ended up buying two dozen medium-sized cod, and a smaller tank to house them in, as she didn't want to overcrowd Mercy. She wasn't sure how long it would last her, but it would certainly be a nice treat for her, a break from the tuna that she clearly did not enjoy eating as much. After making her purchases, out of the corner of her eye, Fareeha caught sight of a stand she normally wouldn't have given so much as a second glance, but a familiar shade of blue drew her attention to the vendor.

An older woman was selling seashells, starfish and jewelry made from stones, corals, shellfish and other products of the sea. What caught her eye was a strombus, large and a very striking shade of blue and white that reminded her of Mercy. After looking over some of the unaltered shells, Fareeha ended up walking away with three seashells for Mercy: the strombus, a pink conch, and a small ridged brown-and-white shell. She wasn't sure if the mermaid would do anything with them, but she thought at the very least it would make the tank a little less dreary, especially after she planned on making a second addition to it before they left for sea again.

As she walked back towards her ship, bucket of live fish in hand, she wondered what exactly she _was_ going to do with Mercy. The more time she had spent with the mermaid, the more she knew it was just wrong to sell her. Her reasoning for allowing Mercy to be imprisoned on her ship in the first place had been inherently selfish and wrong, an absolute obstruction of fairness and the justice that she had always stood for. And yet, she hadn't realized just how wrong it felt until she heard that man talk about her value as if she was nothing more than a diamond ring being sold at a market stall. She couldn't sell her; that was something she would never forgive herself for. Even if it was only one mermaid and they had only just started to look at each other with trust, she wasn't going to be the one that condemned a creature of near-human intelligence to a life of captivity. She wouldn't. She refused to.

And yet, she didn't know what she was going to do with her if she didn't sell her. The obvious solution was to just free her, but there was still the issue that her crew was as vehemently opposed to that idea as she was opposed to selling the mermaid. She bit back a sigh, as she came to the Raptora's gangplank. For now, she'd just keep her on the ship. She'd make the tank more comfortable for her, make sure she was eating things she actually enjoyed, give her plenty of company so she didn't become lonely. She could never replicate the size of the ocean or the freedom Mercy once had, but she'd do everything in her power to keep the mermaid content while she worked out what on earth she was going to do with her. For now, she descended to the lower deck with Mercy's food. The mermaid had been laying on the floor of her tank, curled up on the blanket Fareeha had given her, and she immediately perked up when she entered the room.

"We're going to be on land for most of the day today," she informed Mercy, as she began the instinctive process of climbing the crate, allowing herself access to the tank's lid. "I'll be stopping in a few times today because I have a few surprises for you that I think you'll like. First is this." She opened the tank, dumping about six fish into the tank.

Mercy's eyes widened as the sight of the cod filled the small space with her. Fareeha's concern she might have overstocked the tank were quickly alleviated, as Mercy still seemed to have plenty of space to move around, and she was still huge compared to the fish. Mercy couldn't talk, but she didn't need to talk to show gratitude to the captain; the look on her face was more than enough.

"Don't eat them all at once, unless you want to go back to tuna every day." There was a teasing edge to her voice, as Fareeha reached into her pockets and pulled out the three seashells she had purchased. "I have something else for you," she said, her smile matching the absolutely blissful one on the mermaid's face as she broke the surface of the water. Their faces were close as Fareeha leaned over the tank, all the fear she once possessed of Mercy drowning her long since gone. While the captain watched her face with a tender expression, Mercy took the shells from her hands. Their fingers brushed together for a brief moment; Mercy's hands were soft to the touch. It gave Fareeha even more chills than it had the first she had touched Mercy's back.

Diving back down into the water, the mermaid arranged two of seashells along the floor of the tank, but weaved the brown-and-white one into her hair, where it stayed in place as firmly as a barrette would.

"You like that one, hm?" Fareeha asked, settling down on the crate, facing the tank. "I thought you would." Mercy floated downwards toward the floor, grabbing her blanket to rest on right in front of her, practically touching the front wall. There was still a smile on her face, and Fareeha tried to ignore how much more beautiful she looked with the seashell resting against her temple.

"My mom and I used to collect seashells together," Fareeha mused, smiling at the memory. "That was one thing we always did if we were ever docked at a city near a beach. We'd find absolutely gorgeous ones on the hidden shores." She looked at Mercy, who was watching her with interest, giving her undivided attention. "I thought maybe that was something you were missing." Mercy didn't reply, but she didn't need to; the tender gratitude on her face spoke wonders. As much as she would have loved to spend the rest of her evening with Mercy, Fareeha stood up. "I still have a few things to do before we leave tomorrow, but I'll promise you that I'll be back several times over the next few hours. You'll thank me for it later."

Fareeha couldn't remember the last time she had done something this tedious, but she knew it would be worth it. True to her word, she had returned to the lower deck of her ship at least six times over the next couple hours, each time with two new buckets that she would sit on the floor and then leave, repeating the process over and over again. What Mercy didn't know was the each of the buckets was filled to the brim with sand, from a small beach Fareeha had discovered about half a mile from the port. So while the rest of her crew were probably drinking at a pub, she was doing chores for her mermaid, simply to improve her quality of life.

That damn fish had better appreciate her for all that effort.

When she had twelve of the buckets assembled, Fareeha began to dump each of them into the tank one-by-one, careful to never drop it on where Mercy was floating. At first, she seemed put off by the tiny bits of rock raining down on her, but as she realized what was happening, the mermaid gradually moved to a corner, trying to stay out of the way. For a while, the water was cloudy and filled with sand particles, but as they cleared up, Mercy began to move the substrate around with her tail, smoothing it out to her own desires. While Mercy kicked the sand around, Fareeha rested on the crate, thoroughly exhausted but still smiling at the sight of the mermaid rolling around in the sand, rubbing her body up against it, just feeling and enjoying the texture of something that she had clearly missed. The seashells had been placed on top of the silt and when she was finally done playing in the sand like a child played in a pile of leaves, she rested on her blanket, tail half-buried, touching the seashells idly and watching Fareeha, expression the happiest she had ever seen it.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:**

Sorry for the super long gap between updates here. I'm going to level with you all and say that I fully did not intend there to be any conflicts with the Shimadas whatsoever in this fic. I was initially very surprised by the sheer amount of comments I got that were along the lines of "oh god Genji is planning something isn't he" and when I went back and reviewed the last few chapters, I could completely understand where they came from. I was lazy and did not give the scene between Genji and Fareeha the persistence and closure it needed. Therefore, I've spent a few months looking at the story and fitting in a conflict with them that will satisfy you all because you were right, it looked like I was building up to something. This is why I highly value reviews and comments, they help me see ways to make my stories better.

Also, a retcon: While writing this, I thought of a backstory for Lena I immediately fell in love with and it includes Emily, so she's now on board as the ship's cook. I edited the scene in chapter five where it stated she lived in London:

 _"Have I ever told you that you boost my ego by at least five percent every time I stand near you, Lena?" Fareeha chuckled. "Really, it's a gift. You should have been a motivational speaker. Shame you decided to become a navigator with a big mouth."_

 _To that, Lena let out a loud laugh. "You were the one that asked, Cap'n. I am simply answering you. Though," she paused to laugh to herself again, "I imagine the real reason I avoided the illness was because the cook has a crush on me."_

 _Fareeha just arched an eyebrow at her. "So Emily is trying to poison the rest of us? Is that what you're telling me?"_

 _Lena's face darkened considerably, all playfulness leaving her tone in an instant. "Maybe that's a real possibility. Try asking her?"_

 _Small edit, but I want everyone reading to be aware of it._ _t_

* * *

Lena could hold her alcohol in a tavern as well as any true Brit, but that was about where the extent of her interest in saying on the ground while docked ended. Especially when the alternative was sleeping in a damn hotel room. She had spent far too many nights in her life in such conditions, and not all of them were associated with memories she would consider pleasant. Life before she took up a near-permanent residence as Captain Amari's navigator had been hard, to put it very mildly.

She supposed she had been happy enough-

 _"It certainly could have been much worse," Emily would always gently remind her, but it did nothing to quell the looks they would get, the cold shoulders people who knew would brandish their way. She had spent years serving Queen Victoria, quickly earning a reputation as one of the best navigators in all of Europe. Lena met Emily and quickly realized that she did not, in fact, fancy the opposite sex. The redhead caught her eyes, all smiles and freckles_ and _laughs, and Lena was almost immediately enamored with her._

 _Within the year, they considered themselves all but married - that was simply not a possibility, but as far as both of them were concerned, it would never be necessary._

 _People started to talk. It was odd, the neighbors would say, that no man ever came out of their flat. How peculiar it was that two adult women would leave a house together, and go out to dinner, not talking and laughing like two sisters or two friends, but looking deeply at each other, like a wife would look at her husband._

 _If anyone would ask, they would both deny it. They had to. They had no choice. Still, people continued to talk, and it wasn't long after that Lena found herself discharged from the Queen's navy, and it became all but impossible for her to find work. Almost overnight, Lena Oxton went from one of the best navigators in Europe to an outcast, a reject, something unnatural and weird, something that simply had no place in a 'normal' world._

 _Lena and Emily had been homeless for about three months, jumping around between hotel to hotel, sometimes living off the streets, doing everything they could for even the smallest amount of money, when she met Fareeha for the first time. The two of them were resting in an alleyway of a tavern in London, when the Egyptian emerged, arguing with a man she would later know as McCree, but what truly caught Emily's attention was her reply to the American man's comment._

 _"About time we got some decent food at one of these ports."_

 _"Food is less of a concern to me right now. That client was not very happy with the delays."_

 _"Wouldn't have happened if you had a real navigator," he droned._

 _"I can't be leaning over a map and compass all day long," she replied with a sigh. "I know how to read a map, but I get too busy."_

 _"Hey, don't look at me," he replied. "Ain't my fault that we went forty miles in the wrong direction."_

 _"Did I ever say it was?"_

 _"We were three weeks late," he deadpanned. "Nobody on that crew had a lick of direction between any of 'em. Ya need to find a long-term navigator, Fareeha. Can't be trustin' hired hands to something that important. It'd be like changing medics on every trip."_

 _"I know."_

 _Emily nudged Lena, goading her into jumping into the conversation. At first, Lena hesitated. When she looked at Fareeha, well-dressed, clearly very well off, Captain of a ship, carrying herself with an air of authority that was admittedly intimidating, she couldn't help but look at herself in turn. Dirty, unkempt, homeless; as far as her appearances went the idea of approaching a vessel's Captain and offering her services was a complete and utter joke. She may have been one of the best at her job, but that didn't mean a whole lot when all she had to go off of was her word and a first impression._

 _Still, Lena knew what was on the line if she didn't at least try. Winter was fast approaching, and she knew that the two of them wouldn't stand a chance of surviving if they didn't find something very soon. So Lena swallowed her pride, stood up, and approached the bickering friends with confidence in her stride._

 _Fareeha noticed her first, out of her peripheral vision. Unsurprisingly, she did not exactly look inviting as she had turned to look at her. A frown marred her face as her brown eyes met Lena's. "Can I help you?" the Egyptian woman asked. Her tone was flat, but not unkind; she mostly just sounded confused._

 _The look from McCree was far more hostile and scornful than Fareeha's. "Now, we don't_ got _no money for ya," he very quickly told her, evidently all too keen to brush her off._

 _Lena tried very hard to not looked offended at his words. "I wasn't-"_

 _"Scram."_

 _At that word, Fareeha shot him a very dirty glare. "Excuse my rude friend here," she apologized, offering Lena her hand and pointedly shoving McCree away with her other one. "He's not a people person. He grew up in a barn, surrounded by horses and cows. He wasn't socialized until his parents finally forced him out of his relationship with his oldest bull and sent him to public school."_

 _"Actually, it a heifer. She was a real beauty."_

 _Fareeha just rolled her eyes, but the smallest smile twisted her lips upwards before she looked back at Lena, taking great care to look her in the eyes. "My name is Captain Amari. How may I help you?"_

 _Lena took her hand, returning her smile. "Much obliged, Captain. I don't mean to be eavesdropping, but I couldn't help but hear that you're in a tad bit of a need for a navigator."_

 _"It's nothing I can't work out, I can assure you that," Fareeha replied, very clearly misinterpreting her offer. "Don't worry about us. We'll make due."_

 _"Actually, I was offering you my services," Lena rushed out quickly before Fareeha could dismiss her. "I have a lot of experience on the seas."_

 _"You're a navigator?" the captain asked, her voice saturated in poorly veiled disbelief._

 _Lena allowed confidence to fill her voice as she puffed her chest out ever so slightly. "One of the best in all of Britain."_

 _"Oh, I bet," McCree snorted. "No offense, ma'am, but you sure as hell don't look like any navigator I've ever seen, let alone a successful one."_

 _Lena kept the pleasant smile on her face. "And what might be your job on her crew,_ luv _?"_

 _"I'm the first mate, love," he replied, voice somewhat less playful than it had been while he was speaking to his captain._

 _Lena didn't skip a beat. "You could'a fooled me with that outfit. You look like a sodding ranchhand."_

 _Fareeha let out a pointed snort of amusement, but the look on her face seemed to be very far from convinced. "I'm not interested in picking anyone up right now, but I thank you for the offer. Have a good evening."_

 _Lena bit her lip as Fareeha started to turn away, casting a glance back to Emily. The redhead let out a soft sigh as their eyes met and Lena immediately snapped her gaze back to the captain's retreating figure. She couldn't give up; she had to convince her to give her a chance._

 _"Wait-" she started to say, but stopped when she saw the harsh glare Fareeha gave her upon turning around. When Lena stopped, clearly intimidated by the lack of patience on her face, the captain's expression softened ever so slightly. Encouraged, Lena looked her dead in the eyes. "I can help you. At least hear me out. Please."_

 _The corner of Fareeha's lips turned up ever so slightly. "You're persistent, I'll give you that much."_

 _"That's not a bad trait to have on a ship," McCree mused, drawing back on his cigar as Fareeha flicked her brown eyes between the two of them._

 _Finally, she let out a sigh. "Alright. You have my attention. What is your name, Sailor?"_

 _"Lena Oxton."_

 _To that, Fareeha's eyebrow arched. "Lena Oxton has quite a reputation on the seas," she replied, her tone largely unreadable. "I mean no disrespect to you, but I have a hard time buying that someone as well-known as her would be approaching strangers in the street asking for work." Lena managed to not let it show how harshly those words cut her; she had a very valid point. "For you to be_ her _, you would have had to have fallen on some unbelievably hard times."_

 _It took everything Lena had to keep eye contact with her. "I_ was discharged _from the Queen's navy about three months ago."_

 _"Why?"_

 _A slight wince came to her eyes when that question came up, as it was the one question that she had truly been hoping to avoid. "...lifestyle choices."_

 _"You're going to have to be more specific than that." Her tone became stern once more. "Remember that you have so far offered me no proof of your identity. You're asking me to give you a job based off nothing but your word. You're going to have to be honest and open with me if you wish to continue this conversation."_

 _Finally, a sigh sounded from behind them, as Emily shuffled her way to Lena's side._

 _"It was my fault, Captain."_

 _"It wasn't-" Lena started to say, but stopped at the pointed glare Emily gave her before shifting her hazel eyes back to Fareeha._

 _"Lena did nothing wrong. She lost her place in the navy because of me."_

 _Fareeha looked over at the redhead. "And who might you be?"_

 _"My name is Emily. I'm her girlfriend." The pair of them both winced as the word came out, but, much to their surprise, the dignified captain let out a snorting laugh at the same time her first mate did._

 _"That's it? Someone with your reputation was fired because of that?"_

 _"If that ain't one of the dumbest things I've heard in my entire life," McCree commented._

 _A huge glimmer of hope came to Emily's eyes at their reaction - one that Lena returned in its entirety. That was the last reaction she had expected from the pair of them. "So you don't mind?" Lena asked._

 _One more snort passed Fareeha's nose before she returned to her former composed self. "I couldn't care less about the personal lives of the people on my ship. As long as they do their jobs to the standard I expect, that's all that matters."_

 _"I can promise you that I'll meet your standards, Captain. I'll gladly work for free if that'll make you feel better about bringing me on. All I need is room and board for me and Emily."_

 _Fareeha's face warped into something that strongly resembled pity, but shook her head. "I'm sorry that you've fallen on hard times, but my ship is not a hotel. I'm not going to take two mouths for one job, and I'm not going to trade your pay for that."_

 _"I can cook!" Emily rushed out, coming very close to cutting her off. She nodded her head toward McCree. "He made it sound like you could use a cook on your ship. I'm from a big family, I can stretch rations into meals of a proper quality."_

 _"But do you have any experience on a ship?" Fareeha asked._

 _"No, but I'll damn well learn, I can promise you that."_

 _Fareeha looked back to her first mate for a brief second, nodded her head slightly, and looked back to the two of them._

 _"I'll make you two a deal, then. We don't set sail again for another week. You," she looked to Lena, "will prove to me in that time that you are knowledgeable about the sea, and you," her gaze shifted to Emily, "are passable with rationing. If you both are who you claim to be, I will allow you to prove yourselves on our next voyage."_

That was five years ago, and Lena and Emily had been on board the Raptora with every voyage since.

After spending so many months living in hotel rooms together they had both become very opposed to the idea and often remained on board the Raptora while they were docked, just as content to sleep on their own cots in the sleeping quarters as they would be in a stuffy hotel room. Besides, those quiet hours gave the two of them some time to be alone.

On that night, Lena was lying in the cot Emily normally slept in, listen to her idly chatter from the end of the bed about how she had told McCree that there was something off about the meat that had borderline poisoned almost all of them, that she had warned him it was not fit to be eaten, but he had neglected to mention it to Fareeha.

"I honestly can't believe him," she continued heatedly, to which Lena snorted and rolled over in the bed to face Emily.

"Can't you? I dunno if you've noticed, but our first mate isn't exactly the most responsible person around. Love him to death, you know how he is."

"I just need clean food to work with," she grumbled. "It's honestly not asking much."

"Don't worry about it, Em," Lena said, sitting up and throwing an arm over her shoulders. "They'll be back tomorrow with more. Come and lay down with me. You smell nice."

Emily arched an eyebrow at her. "From what?"

"From all the time spent in the kitchen elbow-deep in flour and bread."

"I think you mean elbow-deep in smelly salted fish fillets and hunks of beef."

Lena grinned at her. "Maybe I like the smell of salted fish fillets and hunks of beef."

That time it was Emily's turn to snort. "In that case, I'm your woman."

"And I'm lucky to have you," she replied, moving to hug her, but that was when the two of them heard a very loud sound coming from below. The pair quickly exchanged a look before they left the living quarters and stepped out onto the upper deck, both immediately going stiff when they saw that the gangplank had been deployed.

"I'm going to investigate," Lena said without hesitation, already moving toward the entrance to the storage section of the lower deck.

Emily grabbed her shoulder. "We need to leave." Her voice was urgent.

"I can't just ignore this," Lena replied, standing her ground. "There's someone else on board."

"That's why we need to go get help!" Emily's eyes shifted to the gangplank. "It's unsafe for both of us to be here right now."

"I can take care of it."

Exasperation entered her tone. "You're a navigator, Lena. It's not your responsibility to-"

"I was one of the highest ranked officers in Queen Victoria's Navy for years, Em. I know how to defend myself." Lena tried not to let the edge show in her voice but apparently failed because Emily looked up at her with a tender look she knew very well.

"I know!" She sighed. "I know. I don't doubt you. I just...worry. You're only one person. You have no idea how many people are down there. And I can't help you if something goes wrong."

Lena gently cupped her girlfriend's face in her hands, brushing a lock of red hair out of her eyes with a thumb. "Nothing will go wrong, I can promise you that."

"You can't promise me that."

"I just did."

With a sigh, the redhead pulled back from Lena. She held out both her hands, showing her all ten of her fingers. "Ten minutes. That's all I'm giving you. If you're not back in ten, I'll-"

"You'll go get Fareeha and McCree. You won't come after me yourself."

For a few seconds, Emily just watched her, expression incredibility torn. Gently, Lena pulled her into a hug, confident brown eyes meeting terrified hazel ones for just a moment before Lena planted a kiss on her freckled forehead.

Emily's grip on her tightened for a moment before she released her waist. "Don't make me have to get them," she whispered. "Be careful."

The two parted ways with one last hug, Emily headed back down to the living quarters and Lena turned her attention to the matter at hand. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the ajar door that led to the bottom floor of the deck. She had no idea who might have been on board this time of night, but she was almost convinced that it was not a member of Fareeha's trusted crew. The sleeping quarters were, after all, the only place that any of them had business being after dark. The kitchen to steal a bite of food, maybe, but there was no reason to be skulking around the cargo hold.

Before descending the stairs, Lena stopped at a room directly next to the Captain's quarters. Only Fareeha, McCree and herself had keys that allowed access to the weapon storage, as they were the only ones Fareeha trusted with such power. Lena's weapons of choice that she kept on the ship was a flintlock pistol, which she very quickly holstered before returning to the open doorway to the lowest floor of the Raptora.

The suspicion slowly building in her gut almost reached a boiling point when she opened the door fully and saw that someone had deployed the ramp they only used when loading and unloading the ship. As quietly as she could, she moved down the slanted surface, wincing with every creak the wood made as her weight shifted the whole way down. Several boxes and barrels had been kicked aside or moved, making the trail to the intruders very easy to follow. Lena stopped dead in her tracks when she saw that the doorway to the room that held the mermaid was open, the door ripped off its hinges.

Lena had only caught a brief glance at the mermaid the day she had been caught. She hadn't pulled herself away from steering the ship while the entire upper deck of hired hands dropped everything they were doing to crowd around the poor thing. She had merely watched at a distance, curious, but she valued her job and the Captain's trust in her far too much to abandon her post. She had watched as Fareeha was goaded into keeping the creature, and had watched it be carried below deck, and hadn't seen her since. Sure, she had heard stories - the entire crew hadn't bloody shut up about it since that day, but one thing Lena did know was that the Captain had strictly forbidden almost the entire crew from interacting with the mermaid, even going as far as to put the room under lock and key.

There was no reason that door should have been open.

As she approached the entryway, voices could be heard, and the language they were speaking was definitely Japanese. Grasping the handle of her pistol and taking a deep breath, Lena shoved past the door to look into the room.

Four men were standing around a small glass tank resting on a wheeled cart, that now contained a blonde orange-tailed mermaid. The mermaid was curled up on the floor of the tiny portable cage, visibly shaking, head buried in her arms. Water coated the floor of the room, and she could also see a shredded net discarded in a corner of the room.

"Oi!" she snapped before she was even thinking, eyes tearing themselves from the mermaid to glare harshly at all of the strangers who definitelydidn't belong there. "What the bloody hell do you think you're all doin' down 'ere?"

As her presence was revealed, all of the men turned to look at her, visibly jolted. For a few seconds, they paused, clearly surprised.

One of them cleared his throat, speaking to her in thickly accented English. "The Master of the Shimada Clan has struck a deal with the captain of this ship. We are here to remove the cargo in question."

Bollocks, she immediately thought, but instead of verbalizing her absolute disbelief so blatantly, Lena just arched a brown eyebrow at him. "If that's true then why are you sneaking onto the ship at this time of night? And why isn't the Captain or her First Mate here to authorize it?"

"It was for the best that such a delicate cargo was handled at a time of the day with fewer crowds."

"Oh, come off it!" Lena snapped, all her exasperation leaving her body at once. "If you expect me to believe such rubbish-"

"Are you implying that we are lying?" he cut her off.

"Implying?" she echoed with a laugh. "I'm not implying a thing, luv. I'm telling you that I know you're full of it."

"I do not recall asking for your permission or supervision, deckhand. If I were yo-"

The man did not get to finish his threat, however, for in the next instant, Lena slammed the butt of the pistol into his jaw, replacing his words with a sickening crunch and a howl of pain. His cries were quickly followed by silence, as Lena brought her weapon to his temple in an identical manner, knocking him out cold. All in all, the man had gone from sneering to screaming to sleeping in less than six seconds. The next several moments nearly had her laughing, as the three remaining thieves spent a solid ten seconds looking between their unconscious friend and Lena, who gave them a pleasant smile in return.

"What'cha looking at?" she asked, voice calm and friendly.

Her response was one of the goons lunging at her. Without a moment of hesitation, Lena could feel her Navy combat training kick in and easily rolled out of the path of his arms, using the momentum to get back onto her feet before the much larger man could even recover from his heavy-handed tackle.

In the blink of an eye, Lena dashed around him, delivering a well-placed kick to the back of his knees that sent him buckling to the ground with a sharp gasp of pain. Following the example she set of the first man, she knocked him out with a blunt blow to the side of the head. Shouting echoed around her as the other two finally realized that she was a threat and came at her somewhat simultaneously. She sprung into a somersault, again using her much smaller frame to her advantage. Both of the men came within inches of cracking their heads together but stopped to turn toward her once more. The faster and smaller of the two was much quicker to react to her movements than the second had been and charged into her the very moment she was on her feet again, knocking her to the ground.

Looming over her, the man grasped both of her wrists, disarming her without much difficulty and tried to put her in a headlock. Staying calm, she allowed him to pull her up into a kneeling position. The second she was nearly face level with him Lena put all of her strength into bashing her skull against his face with enough force that she was almost positive she broke his nose. Blood began to coat the floor as he rolled around on the wooden ground, howling in pain.

The final man hesitated, clearly debating if getting into a fight with her was worth it or not. Ultimately, he apparently decided getting his arse kicked by a girl half his size was more prideful than running from a girl half his size because he went after her in very much the same manner as the other two had. Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Lena simply waited for him to grab her by the shoulder blades, and retaliated with a harsh kneel to the crotch. As he fell to his side with a wail, she easily knocked him out while he was rolling around on the ground cradling his injuries like a child.

Clearly, they had absolutely no combat training whatsoever. They were relying on strength in numbers and didn't know the first thing about fighting. They ran her out of breath, but she felt completely unscathed otherwise. When the last man went down, Lena recovered her pistol from the floor and closed her eyes. The navigator leaned against the nearest surface, which happened to be the smaller tank the mermaid was in. After she felt less like her heart was going to burst from her chest, she finally turned to look at the creature in the glass cage. Fear was very evident on her face as she peered up at Lena from behind the tail she had wrapped around her body. Not at all a surprising reaction, given the circumstances they were currently in. Their mermaid had a bit of a reputation for being timid.

For just a moment, Lena ignored the incapacitated thieves and watched the mermaid, their gazes making contact with her as she slowly crouched down until she was eye level with her.

"You alright, luv?" Her voice was soft. "Don't be afraid of me, I'm just one of Fareeha's friends who happened to be here when I needed to be." Slowly the mermaid lifted her head, expression calming. "And don't worry about them," she gestured to the people behind her. "I wouldn't let them hurt you on a bet."

Quickly, the expression on the mermaid shifted back to fear, her blue eyes focusing on something else behind Lena at the same time footsteps could be heard. Spinning on a dime and snapping her eyes to the doorway of the small room, Lena met the dark eyes of a man with dyed green hair.

His bushy black eyebrows arched as he saw that carnage that had befallen what Lena assumed to be his companions.

"You want some too?" she snapped at him, pointing her pistol at him. "I've got no tolerance for thieves on this ship. I highly suggest you get few hands and carry your friends here to a hospital."

The response she got from the man was a chuckle. "I'm not impressed if you're trying to sound intimidating."

"I'm just explaining what's going to happen to you if you don't turn tail and leave this ship right this instant, luv."

"I'd highly recommend you go to bed." As he spoke, he removed a set of shurikens from a holder at his hips. "By all means, you should be punished for hurting my brother's hired muscles, but just between us, I don't like them either. You won't win against me, however. I'm giving you a chance to go back to your quarters and pretend you never saw us here."

"A tad bit cocky, aren't we?" Lena snorted.

"Very well then," he deadpanned. Lena hadn't even been able to process a witty response to that when a set of the stars were suddenly flying at her. She only barely ducked to avoid them, where the shurikens stuck fast into a wooden crate behind her. In an instant, Lena threw her attempts to not kill the intruders out the window and removed her pistol before she was even on her feet fully, firing a flurry of shots into the doorway. In the blink of an eye, he revealed a katana from a sheath on his back, positioning it and shifting it in such a way her shots bounced off the surface and flew into various walls. Lena had barely processed his display of superhuman reaction times before, with an agility that easily matched her own, he jumped vertically like a cat, reaching a height that did not seem possible for a normal person, landing only a few feet from her.

He lunged forward, clearing the tiny distance between the two of them in another instant, slashing toward her. A hiss of pain passed her lips as she tried to move out of the way and, failing to make enough space, receiving a small cut from the very end of the blade across her right arm, just under her shoulder blade. With gritted teeth, she fired off her pistol to where she thought he was standing but found the space empty. She quickly snapped her head around to scan the room, and was only just able to leap out of the way of another attack with the sword.

Very quickly, Lena started to realize that she might have bitten off a bit more than she could chew with this man. She hadn't expected a long fight; she was just expecting to have to chase off a couple of thieves, so she had foolishly brought no spare ammunition. Her gun could hold eight rounds, seven were gone, and this man was armed with a katana that was longer than her arm. Her options were very quickly running out, but she also knew that she would never just allow herself to give up.

Resigning herself to making this as hard as she could for him, Lena managed to evade another clean lunging swipe from the sword. With a curse, Lena ducked behind a crate, only barely avoiding a few more of his throwing stars. With a retrained sigh, she looked at the mermaid from behind the crate. The creature was watching her with very legitimate concern. For a moment her blue eyes shifted over to the man, then very quickly back to hers. Lena grimaced before turning her attention to the matter at hand.

At that second a noise came to the navigator's ears. It was a low humming; soft, otherworldly, echoing in a way that was both haunting and absolutely uplifting. Every single hair on her body stood on edge as a strength returned to her body: her muscles felt as loose as they did upon waking up in the morning, the stinging pain where the blade had grazed her was completely gone, her mind felt clearer than it had felt in weeks. As a new strength flew through her, she glanced around the room, trying to pin down the source of the sound. It didn't have clear origin from sound alone; the noise completely enveloped her, blanketing her a chanting tranquility. Lena glanced over the crate, looking for the thief, but he had stopped advancing, staring at something directly behind her.

Lena followed his gaze, turning to face the tank that held the mermaid, but the creature looked absolutely nothing like she had mere seconds ago. She was absolutely glowing; every inch of her body radiated light. The golden-yellow of her scales had become a source of illumination in their own right, as the grooves between each scale were shining with a blue bioluminescence that reflected off the shadows of the dark storage room, just as bright as any oil lamp. The water around her resembled a tub of pure light. Her once-solid dorsal fin and tailfin had become loose and wispy as if made of smoke. The dorsal fin, in particular, split and hung over either of her shoulders like a pair of wings belonging to an angel made of nothing but light. Her vibrant blue irises seemed to have a life of their own as she fixed Lena in the most intense stare she'd ever seen in her life.

Lena jumped considerably when three of the shurikens bounced off the wall of the tank, startling her and the mermaid, who flinched toward the back of the tank. In that instant, her spell was broken; her light faded in an instant, her tail and fins became solid again, her eyes dulled. However, the impact of whatever that was remained much present in Lena's body, as she turned to face the man with a renewed vigor. When the navigator stood up, the thief still had his eyes focused on the mermaid's tank, so Lena took that opportunity to cripple him. Her final bullet hit its mark, cutting squarely through the flesh of his right hand, forcing him to drop the problematic katana. He let out a sharp gasp of pain but otherwise showed no indication he had just been shot.

The second the sword was dropped, Lena leapt toward him, making great care to slide the sword away with her foot before he could sheath it. A highly aggravated growl came out of his throat before be viciously jabbed at her face with his hand, which she blocked with her forearm. They went back and forth for a few seconds, exchanging punches and kicks, blocking and avoiding each other, dancing circles around the tiny room. Finally, Lena misjudged one of his hooks and was knocked off her feet at the end of his fist.

She moved to stand up, trying to shake the heavy-handed blow off, when the next sight she was treated to was the blurred image of something slamming upward into her face. A very audible crack rang in her ears, as her nose then began gushing blood, the entire bone repositioned in a way that confirmed in an instant to her that it was broken. With a shriek of pain, Lena rolled over on her side, holding her nose with one hand while trying to stand with the other. Glaring upward, she could see that the culprit for the cheap shot was one of the men she had kicked around earlier - somewhat ironically, the man whose nose she had broken herself.

"Don't bother," he growled at her, kicking her in the chest while the navigator tried to position her feet under herself. Gasping for air, the last thing Lena was aware of was the numbness in her face, the agony in her chest, and a flash of green before something came into contact with her head and her entire world went black.


	8. Chapter 8

Seeing red was something that was something often described to depict great rage, but Fareeha felt nothing as she stared at the empty tank in front of her. A numbness had settled over her, one that reached all the way to the pit of her stomach, blanketing her body in a certain cold heaviness. She and Jesse had arrived as quickly as they possibly could have at Emily's request, but as the redhead ran around the storage room in a steadily increasing panic, she could find no trace of Lena or Mercy. It was becoming more apparent to Fareeha that they had still been too late.

The first emotion the captain felt, after the shock wore off, was an immense and heavy guilt. If there was one thing her mother had taught her, one thing she had always strived to live by, it was to value the lives of those around her. She was supposed to always put the man before the mission, always fight for and protect those who needed her help. Lena and Mercy were both her responsibility. As a captain, she took on the responsibility for every single person who set foot, or fin as it were, on her ship, willingly or not.

Fareeha was distantly aware that Emily's panicking had quickly descended into curses and muffled sobs. At the admittedly horrifying realization that she had also lost one of her closest friends in addition to Mercy to a group of criminals, Fareeha spun on her heel, delivering one of her fists directly into the nearest wooden wall before stalking off angrily, barely conscious of her steady stream of Arabic profanities. It wasn't a conscious decision, but her feet quickly carried her to her bedroom. She ripped the door open with all her might and slammed it shut behind her, shaking the wall so hard that her coat fell off its hook. She spent the next several minutes packing around her room, occasionally kicking at the nearest piece of furniture, fuming but trying to will herself to calm down. When Fareeha heard her bedroom door open without any warning, she picked up the nearest object on her desk, a thick textbook, and unceremoniously chucked it toward the front of the room.

"Leave me alone!" she snarled, eyes narrowed venomously as she snapped her gaze to meet that of her first mate's.

With the smallest hint of a chuckle, he picked the book up from the floor in front of him. "So you can continue to beat the hell out of inanimate objects? Not likely." When Fareeha ignored him to continue pacing the room, Jesse grabbed her by the arm. "Fareeha, you're bleeding." He held one of her knuckles up to her face; apparently, it had started bleeding after punching the wall. He gently steered her to one of her desks and gestured for her to sit down, rummaging through the drawer until he found a roll of bandages. Jesse finished wrapping the gauze around her bloodied knuckles, Fareeha could feel the sting of tears behind her eyes. Not from any feelings of sadness, but from anger and regret.

"We'll get this fixed, Fareeha. Don't worry your head about it."

She laughed without humor. "Fixed? In what world can any of this be fixed?" She lifted her hand, ticking off fingers as she went over each of her points. "Not only have I lost my own crew member, but a creature I was supposed to be protecting. We're off schedule, we're down a navigator, and we're up against the damn yakuaza. There's not even a good point to start fixing this mess at."

"You say that like this is just _your_ mess to sift through."

"It is. I'm the captain. I'm the one responsible for everything that happens on this ship."

Jesse shook his head. "And that, right there? That's the problem, 'Reeha. Ya only think it's your problem, when in reality ya got a whole crew here who cares about Lena and your mermaid."

"Spare me," she said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "The only reason this crew gives a damn about Mercy is that she's valuable."

"Don't matter," he replied. "They all still want her back regardless." Fareeha opened her mouth to protest, but Jesse held up his hand, silencing her. "Fact of the matter is, Fareeha, ya only think the situation is as bad as it is 'cause ya wanna do all the work yourself. You want this burden all on your shoulders, but that's not your job."

"Then what do you propose I do?" she snapped. "Sit back and do nothing?"

"In a word? Hell yeah." Jesse gave her a small grin as she arched an eyebrow at him.

"Hell yeah is two words, Jesse."

He snorted but otherwise ignored her. "Your duty right now is to keep the rest of the crew calm and the ship runnin'. A little birdie told me ya got a cook right now that's a mighty bit upset and could use a broad shoulder to cry on."

The captain sighed. "And tell her what, exactly? Sorry I kept dangerous cargo that ended up putting your girlfriend in danger?' You know how close Emily and Lena are." She scratched at the back of her neck, running her fingers through her ponytail in frustration.

"How 'bout you tell her that Jesse's got it handled and he'll be back in a bit with Lena and the mermaid?"

Fareeha stopped dead in her tracks at those words, staring at him in bewilderment, hand still in her hair.

"I...what?"

Smiling at the confusion that showed on her face, Jesse tipped his hat to her. "I'll handle it. You comfort the lady, keep everyone here nice and calm. That's your job right now. Captains don't go runnin' off and startin' fights."

Fareeha sighed. "Jesse-"

He held up his hand once more. "Nope. I don't wanna hear it. This ship still needs to be ran. We need to be ready to leave tomorrow. You worry about that and leave the yakuza to yours truly."

"You have a plan to deal with the Shimadas, then?" she asked, voice highly skeptical.

Jesse laughed. "A plan? Me? What do you take me for? Who are you and what did ya do with the Fareeha I know and love?"

Fareeha's eyes narrowed at him. "And what do I do if you don't come back, genius? What then?"

He let out a fake gasp of pain and placed his hand over his heart in a dramatic fashion. "It's like you don't have any faith in me, 'Reeha. I'm crushed."

"You know that's not what I mean." Her voice softened ever so slightly.

"Then chin up, buttercup," he replied with a grin. "I'll be back faster than you can say 'yeehaw'." Without waiting for an answer from her, Jesse turned on heel and walked right out.

Fareeha glared at the closed door for several long seconds, almost wishing she had done more to stop him, but jumped slightly when she heard a knock on the wood. Biting back a sigh, the captain wiped the last of her heated, angry tears from her eyes, straightened herself, and answered the knock with a flat, "Come in."

When Emily slowly opened the door, it took Fareeha a few seconds to process McCree must have had her standing out there and sent her in once he was gone.

"You wanted to talk to me?" she asked, voice far more composed than it had been the last time Fareeha had seen her.

Playing along with what Jesse had clearly told her before leaving, the captain nodded, gesturing for the redhead to sit down on one of the chairs in the room.

"I just wanted to check in with you." That time Fareeha failed to suppress her sigh as she pulled up a chair directly next to Emily. "You were very distressed earlier."

Emily was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was still shaking. "Do you blame me?"

"Not at all. You have every right to be upset."

The cook bit her lower lip, her eyes falling to the hands resting in her lap. "Lena and I have been together for years. She's always been headstrong and stubborn, but...that's just who she is. It's who she's always been. I learned to look the other way while she endangers her life a long time ago, but I've never been able to prevent it. All she cares about is helping others, making the world a better place." With a small whimper, her flowing words broke off into a cracked sob, as she brought her hand up to her face, muffling her next words. "She doesn't give a damn about her own safety. I told her to get help, I told her not to go down there herself. I knew I'd be too late to help her, I..." Her words finally became unintelligible and faded into hiccuping cries.

Slowly, Fareeha stood up, moving over to sit directly in front of her so that she was eye level with the English woman. She had been letting Emily vent to her silently, but it was clear to the captain that it was more than necessary to explain McCree's plan to her. "Emily, Lena is going to be fine."

It took a few seconds, but Emily managed to force herself to look up into Fareeha's brown eyes. Her expression was full of doubt and pain, but she managed to restrain her noises to just sniffles.

Offering her a smile, Fareeha continued, "That's part of the reason I asked Jesse to grab you. I wanted to assure you that we are already making arrangements to have her returned safely. He has history with the Shimada clan." Emily's tears dried up, replaced with genuine concern as her eyes widened ever so slightly. "The good kind of history," Fareeha quickly added, hoping to end her worry before it began. "He used to work with them. I trust Jesse to bring her back unharmed."

Emily stared back at her for several seconds, before a heavy sigh passed her lips, but Fareeha recognized it as mostly relief. "Thank you," she murmured."

"You don't have to thank me." She gave Emily another small smile. "You know I love Lena. We all do. The last thing I want is for her to be hurt, as noble as her intentions were."

Emily nodded, but a frown still marred her features. "And what about your mermaid? That's what they were after, wasn't it?" Fareeha kept her face impressively neutral at that question; truth be told, she was very aware that Jesse had offered her no promises that there was any chance he would be able to recover Mercy as well as Lena. If it came down to it, Lena was the one he would return with. Ignoring the agony and guilt that knowledge brought her very soul, Fareeha merely nodded; she could kick herself in the ass when she wasn't looking at a distressed and heartbroken friend in the eyes.

"Lena is his priority. I know he'll do his best, but Lena is the reason he's going, not Mercy." Fareeha stood. "In any case, let me go make you some tea. I think we both could use some."

Emily gave her a small smile and followed the captain out to the deck.

* * *

The Hanamura compound, the main center of Shimada clan's criminal empire, was not hard to find, even for someone who hadn't once been a constant, welcomed guest on the property. If there was one thing Hanzo Shimada was not, it was subtle. Everyone knew of the Shimadas and their power, that the land was theirs first and foremost, and he wanted everyone who touched his kingdom to know it. The compound was made of numerous buildings, every one as grand and as awe-inspiring as the last, a series of mansions and structures and towers and pagodas all nestled in a bed of vibrant pink cherry blossoms. As Jesse paused by the main gate to the grounds, his eyes glanced at a ramen shop that had been there for years, just as busy as it had been back when he had been treated to luxurious meals straight from Hanzo's wallet. Business security, he'd called it, Jesse recalled with a smirk.

Finally, he turned his attention back to the high wooden doorway in front of him. No point stalling any longer. The entryway was open, which wasn't too unusual from his memory; they typically would allow outsiders entry to the grounds, but they never got much farther than the first pair of pagodas if they didn't have personal business with the clan itself. Jesse had barely crossed the threshold to the compound before he was stopped by a burly man in a suit, clearly armed by a handgun of some kind.

"Stop!" he snapped, voice gruff in a way that was very clearly rehearsed. "What business do you have here today?"

"I'm here to see Hanzo, actually."

The man arched an eyebrow at him. "Do you have a meeting with-"

"I'm an old friend," Jesse cut him off, keeping his tone firm. He knew how these type of guards worked; he had to be rigid, or he'd get nowhere fast.

The guard snorted. "Do you realize how many times a day I hear that? Nobody is permitted on the grounds without explicit permission from Master Hanzo."

"Well, I'll tell you what," Jesse droned in response, "I know for a fact how this little operation works. I'm gonna give you my name, and you're gonna go fetch your master."

"And if I don't?" he snorted in response, towering over the cowboy in both height and bulk, in a painfully forced attempt to intimidate him.

"Then I'm afraid I'll just have to kick you in the shins."

At that, the guard let out the beginning of a laugh but was cut off just as quickly as the outburst started, the guffaw warping into a gasp of pain as Jesse did exactly as he promised and delivered the end of his cowboy boot to the man's kneecap. Spitting curses in Japanese, the guard pulled his handgun out. Hands up, Jesse allowed himself to be led away at gunpoint.

Not exactly the method of getting to the main building that he had planned, but it worked just as well because the second they walked into the room, the guard was dismissed by a man Jesse recognized all too well as Hanzo. He was seated around a table, opposite Genji, though the contrast between the two brothers was incredibly distinct. Unlike Genji, everything about Hanzo was rigid, professional, and sharp— from his posture and the clothes he wore to the way his arms were crossed over his chest and the severe expression on his face as the guard scurried away.

Jesse was left alone with the two brothers.

The first thing Hanzo did was sigh. "I almost regret to ask this, but what on earth do you want?" He demanded, breaking the silence with his gruff voice.

Jesse returned his glare with mock hurt. "Can't a guy come visit an old pal of his without being accusing of havin' some ulterior motives for it?"

Hanzo's eyes just narrowed. "You have a reason for being here. I do not wish to make idle chatter with you, Jesse McCree. To what do I owe the...pleasure of this meeting?" His tone was flat, coarse, dismissive as if he'd rather have been pulling out his teeth than talking to the American man.

Jesse gave him a teasing smirk in reply. "The pleasure is all mine, darlin'. How long has it been since we last stood in this room together? Ten years? Eleven? I can see your sense of decoration hasn't changed a bit in that time." He looked around himself pointedly.

"As I can see you still dress up like a cowboy during professional meetings."

"'Course. I gotta keep up my endless rugged western charm, after all. I for one think it's nice to see ya again after so long. It's a change of pace fr-"

"Your sentiment is not mutual," he snapped, cutting him off roughly. "I am incredibly busy, which is clearly more than what you can say."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that. I've been pretty well occupied since the last time I saw you."

"Doing what, do tell?" Hanzo demanded. "The last time I heard anything about you, you had left Overwatch to pursue the life of a sailor."

"You ain't wrong there," Jesse replied, however, before he could go into detail over what that exactly meant, he was cut off again.

"So you reduced yourself to a mere deckhand?"

Jesse laughed, ignoring the way Hanzo's lip tightened at the outburst. "No way in hell. I'm the first mate of a merchant vessel."

"A merchant vessel?" he echoed, voice taking a strong tone of disbelief. "You went from one of the best smugglers in all of Overwatch to a petty trader?"

For once, Jesse allowed some steel to entire his face and tone. "Ya don't know the whole story. There was infightin'. The organization was fallin' apart at the seams and I wanted no part of that." He sighed. "Glad to see that it apparently recovered, but for a while, Overwatch was a sinkin' ship taking on water way too fast for my liking and by the time that rolled around, I had other obligations."

"Like what?"

"Family, for one," Jesse snapped. "And I know how much kinship means to you, Hanzo. Someone who's been like a lil' sister to me since she could walk wanted me to help her run her crew so I accepted. I wouldn't abandon her for the world."

Hanzo fell silent at his words, but Jesse knew why: his pride. The Shimada clan was well-known for their rigid sense of pride and the world would fall apart before a Shimada would admit he was wrong or even apologize. Hanzo had nothing to argue the point of loyalty to those considered family, so he instead opted for silence. Jesse used the small window to pull one of his cigars out and light it.

"Have those things not killed you yet?" he asked, nose wrinkling in disgust as Jesse drew back on the cigar.

"I certainly hope not. If I'm dead, I'm askin' for a refund."

"You could step outside before starting that," he grumbled; Jesse just grinned at that.

"I ain't done here just yet. You haven't had enough of my company." He paused to put the rest of his cigars away. "Anyway, I'm here for two reasons. One, I just wanted to see ya again, but we'll get to that later. Two, I actually have to file a complaint against your brother there."

Hanzo glanced back at Genji for a few seconds, before returning his attention to Jesse. "Why?"

"He treated my lil' sister pretty damn poorly. We docked yesterday afternoon. Genji did a walkthrough of our ship with her. This morning, we were missing both our navigator and our pet mermaid. Don't suppose you know anything about that, do ya?"

"You know how we operate," Hanzo replied, voice flat.

"'Course I do. That's why I'm here."

"You wish to recover both of them." It was not a question, but a statement.

Jesse winked at him. "Sure do, pumpkin. How are we gonna make this work?"

"Make this work?" Hanzo repeated, tone as cold as ice. "I haven't seen you in a decade. You abandoned all connections with my clan to run around selling trinkets. You hold no importance to me besides the history we have. Why would you expect me to treat you any differently than I would any other foreign ship that came into my port?"

Jesse shook his head. "You got me all wrong, partner. I don't want special treatment, I just wanna make you a deal, same as any other person you deal with. Let's make this an official business proposal."

Hanzo glared at Jesse for several long seconds, scrutinizing him, but eventually conceded. "Very well. What is your proposition?"

Jesse tipped his hat to him. "First of all, I want our navigator back. We both know she was just defendin' herself and her ship from thieves. If you want me to pay, that's fine by me, but I also know we _both_ know the cost of keepin' her locked up ain't worth the punishment for beatin' up a few hired hands. I'm much more interested in negotiating a price for the mermaid."

"I'm much more interested in hearing what you could possibly offer me that would be worth the amount of money selling that mermaid will make me," Hanzo replied.

"How much you figure she's worth?" Jesse asked.

Hanzo let out a small unamused chuckle. "I have connections to some of the wealthiest families in all of Asia. You know this. For a mermaid like that one, with western features, the bare minimum would be at least $500,000, undoubtedly more when I open it to bidding. Do you think your merchant vessel could beat that?"

Jesse had to bite back a sigh; he had expected as much. Hanzo and his clan had been capturing, selling and trading merfolk for years; it was how their fortune was founded three generations ago. He knew the value of these creatures more than anyone else did, and it would be a heavy price indeed to return the mermaid if they did not have the cold hard money that he'd demand from anyone else. Jesse knew exactly what to offer Hanzo to sway him, but Fareeha was liable to kill him for it. Hopefully, she cared more about Mercy being returned to her safely than she cared about her own code of conduct and her honor as a merchant.

"I'll give ya our services for a year." Hanzo actually faltered for a moment; his posture became less rigid and surprise crossed his face, but he reigned it in impressively fast. "We're on a job at the moment," Jesse continued, "but we shouldn't be much more than a month and we'll be done. After that, we'll be yours for a year. We'll transport anything for you anywhere you need transporting to." Jesse gave him a grin. "Think of it as a business investment instead of financial one. You can sell that mermaid for one big ol' chunk of money, or ya can be guaranteed a lucrative trading system for an entire year. We both know what the more profitable option is."

"I wouldn't turn that down, Hanzo," Genji suddenly said, piping up from the background for the first time.

"Be quiet!" he snapped back at his brother. "We wouldn't even be here right now if you hadn't robbed an old associate of mine!"

Genji laughed. "If it weren't for me, you wouldn't be having this conversation. You should be thanking me, brother."

Hanzo turned away from his younger and looked back at Jesse. "You have a deal, but you had better come back when I call upon you."

Jesse beamed at him. "Just can't get enough of me, can't say I blame you."

* * *

While one of Hanzo's guards was tasked with retrieving Lena, another one showed Jesse to the room where Mercy was being held. The mermaid lifted her head when the two of them entered. At first, her expression was highly uneasy, but that changed almost the instant she recognized Jesse. Her face perked up, entire body moving involuntarily toward the front of the tank, hope entering her expression. The cowboy almost snorted in laughter at that; he had never seen the damn fish so happy or relieved to see him before that second.

"Ready to go home, fishsticks?" he asked her and for once the mermaid didn't glare at the nickname he had given her over a month ago. The two of them set to work, slowly getting the small tank onto a cart and fitting a thick black sheet over the top of it so every person they walked past wouldn't see that they were moving an animal worth an absurd amount money.

Lena eventually was brought to him, remaining uncharacteristically quiet until Hanzo had dismissed the two of them. Jesse pushed the cart holding the tank and it wasn't until they were outside the compound grounds that Lena finally spoke.

"You got me out and got the mermaid back? How the bloody hell did you manage that?"

Jesse sighed. "I go way back with Hanzo. When we were both young, I dealt with his old man an awful lot. We always had a spark, but Hanzo was to become the lord of his clan, and I was just a smuggler that worked for his father. It could never go anywhere with him around, but now that we're older and have gone our separate ways it sorta feels like we might've drifted too far apart."

Lena furrowed her brows at him. "You still have feelings for him?"

Jesse shrugged. "Hard to tell, honestly. Could be, could just be that old habits die hard. I was there to get you and 'Reeha's fish back, not to rekindle with old friends."

The navigator fell silent for a few seconds before speaking again. "Anything is possible, you know. There's probably still chance if you really want it to work out."

Jesse snorted. "What are you now, a love doctor? What did Hanzo expose you to in that dungeon?

"I still got more of a relationship than you do. I know a bit more about 'em... I mean, even Fareeha and the mermaid have more of a relationship than you."

"Ya wanna know something, Tracer? Words hurt. They hurt almost as much as having to live on a boat with you."

"You could'a just left me there."

"Fareeha would have crashed her ship into a rock ten miles out of port." Jesse drew back on the cigar hanging out of his mouth. "But you're not that bad for a homeless lesbian we adopted outside of pub."

"Aww, thanks, luv." Lena said, sarcasm dripping from every word. "Too bad I can't say the same about you."

Jesse tipped his hat to her. "In any case, you're welcome, ma'am."

It only took them about ten minutes to make it back to the Raptora; by that time it was probably mid-morning, judging by the sunlight. As they neared the ship, someone on the deck shouted their names and the gangplank was lowered so they could board with the tank. Fareeha was waiting for them.

"Yeehaw," she deadpanned. "You're late." Before Jesse could reply to her, however, she turned her attention to Lena. "I would tell you off, but I'm mostly just glad you're alright."

Lena gave her a sheepish grin. "Sorry, Cap."

The captain, much to her own annoyance, couldn't help but smile slightly in return. "Please do not do that again. I don't think Emily will be able to handle it."

At her girlfriend's name, Lena's face fell. "Is she-"

"She's waiting for you in the kitchen," Fareeha replied, and Lena practically sprinted off the deck after giving Fareeha a little salute. "I don't even want to know how you managed this," she said, eyes falling back on the covered tank, "but thank you, Jesse."

Her first mate nodded. "It wasn't without a big promise, but I'll explain that later. For now, let's get that fish of yours back in her tank."

"I'll take care of it," Fareeha said. "You get the ship moving. I want to get out of this port as soon as possible."

Jesse nodded and left the captain to handle getting Mercy back into the lower deck.

Once she had finally managed to maneuver the smaller tank through a series of ramps through the storage rooms, Fareeha removed the cloth covering it, feeling an unreal amount of relief when the mermaid looked up at her visibly unharmed. For a moment, Mercy's face was calm as their eyes met; however, the calmness ended as soon as it had arrived. Mercy looked at her surroundings, ears and dorsal fin pressing tightly to her skin as her eyes finally came back to rest on the larger tank. Fareeha took her coat off and dipped her arms in the tank; Mercy was still as she allowed Fareeha to lift her out of the water by supporting the joint of her tail and her back.

But the second she was out of the smaller cage and over the wooden floor, Mercy thrashed and lunged forward, immediately causing Fareeha to drop her. At first, the captain was just surprised, but as she moved to pick the mermaid up again, she actually growled at her, dorsal fin flared, ears flared wide, teeth bared, glaring directly into her skull, almost a spitting image of the first time she had seen her.

Fareeha tried not to sound too aggressive as she spoke. "Knock that off, you can't stay there. You're going to dry out. Let me get you into the bigger tank where you'll be comfortable."

The snarls died down when Fareeha approached her again, but Mercy still made it completely impossible to pick her up, as she writhed across the floor, slapped her tail and did everything she could to struggle. On her third attempt to grab the slippery mermaid, Mercy growled at her again and Fareeha felt her patience snap. She drew herself up to her full height and ripped open the lid on the smaller tank, glaring at the mermaid as she spoke.

"You have two choices: big or small. You decide. I'm trying to do this nicely, but if you're going to act like an animal, I'll call a deckhand here and let him get you in one of those tanks."

The noises from her throat died down and her dorsal fin slowly lowered to a more relaxed position, but Mercy continued to glare at her. Cautiously, the captain once again bent down to pick her up. However, this time she stayed totally still as Fareeha carefully climbed the crate and dropped her into the bigger tank.

"There, that wasn't so bad. You made that way harder than it needed to be, Mer-" Fareeha started to scold but was cut off by the mermaid dashing straight to the surface, poking her blonde head out so that it was adjacent to Fareeha's, blue eyes uncharacteristically cold and hard.

"Stop calling me that," she seethed. "My name is _Angela_."

In that instant, Fareeha stopped moving. She felt her eyes go wide as she stared at the mermaid, ears ringing, mind reeling, barely able to comprehend the fully intelligible words that had had just been spoken by a creature that wasn't even human.

"You..." she blurted out, voice trailing off. "You can..." For several long seconds, Fareeha just stood stock still, barely processing the fact that the mermaid had spoken. Not just nodded or hummed at her, but formed fully coherent words in a language they both clearly understood. As she nearly lost her balance on the crate she stood on, the captain grabbed the top of the tank for support. By the time Fareeha processed the words that the mermaid had uttered, Mercy- or Angela, rather- was hanging her arm over the rim of the tank, impatiently drumming her fingers against the glass, ears pressed against her skull in hostile annoyance.

"Yes, yes," she huffed, eyes biting into Fareeha's like daggers, "she can speak. She can talk. She's not just a stupid fish." When she spoke that time, Fareeha was a bit surprised to find that her voice definitely held a thick accent that she couldn't quite place. European, for sure. German, maybe?

"I...shouldn't be surprised that you can," Fareeha finally managed to reply. After the initial shock of the fact that Angela had spoken to her, Fareeha regained her thoughts. Ever since she had first been dragged aboard the ship, Fareeha had hoped to hear Angela's voice, but she had long since assumed that Angela simply was simply incapable of speech. A stupid, foolish conclusion to come to, Fareeha at that moment realized. Of course she could talk. The mermaid had long since made it clear that she could understand every word spoken to her. Why the hell would she be unable to speak?

She had simply chosen not to. And yet here she was- very clearly agitated, albeit, but still showing a willingness to respond to her words for the first time ever.

Angela stopped moving her fingers for a moment, but her face remained unchanged. "I would certainly think so."

"You never told me you could talk!" Fareeha almost snapped back, "How was I-"

"You never asked," she said, tone blunt. "You merely assumed that I couldn't."

"I did," Fareeha admitted softly, slightly abashed, "and that was foolish of me. I'm sorry."

"Oh, I'm sure you are." Angela reached up to tuck a lock of her platinum hair behind one of her webbed ears. "Because you now know that I can. Remorse is a thing that is constantly fluctuating with you humans." Angela shifted down deeper into the water ever so slightly. "In any regard, I did not wish to carry a conversation with any of you. I merely got fed up with that stupid name you gave me. I expect I won't be hearing it again?" Her ears pressed flat against her skulls once more.

"You won't," Fareeha assured her, "but I do have one question."

Angela just looked at her expectantly, expression softening ever so slightly, but her features were still far sharper than what Fareeha was used to.

"Are you okay? They didn't harm you, did they? You seem agitated."

Much to her surprise, Angela let out a small chuckle at her question. "What interesting creatures you are. You can speak, you can hear, you can even listen, but you don't understand. None of you do. Perhaps that's the common thread that ties your kind together."

With that, Angela dove back under the water.

"Ang-" Fareeha started to say, but was cut off very abruptly when the flipper of the mermaid's tail broke the surface and slapped her face with a loud _thwack_ sound that nearly knocked her off the crate. Fareeha blinked at Angela, equal parts confused and enraged at the same time.

Angela merely returned her glare before pointedly grabbing her blanket off the floor of the tank and covering herself with it as she curled up into a ball in the far cover.


	9. Chapter 9

Fareeha had no idea how long she stood there — staring at the mermaid in an emotional state that was somewhere wedged between bewildered shock and indignant fury and hand to her cheek where Angela's tail had struck her. She was only able to tear her eyes from the golden tail poking out from under the lump of fabric— the only indication the mermaid hadn't evaporated— when she felt her fingers grow damp. Pulling her fingers back, Fareeha realized that she was bleeding. Fixing Angela with the dirtiest glare she'd ever given the mermaid, she turned and walked out, slamming the door behind her.

Fareeha quickly made her mind up to see Lucio over the admittedly embarrassing injury. God knew how much bacteria that wound had. The captain was trying to come up with a credible excuse as to how in the hell she got it— it wasn't exactly easy to explain how a mermaid managed to slice her face open in the perfect shape of a tailfin—when she walked directly into someone.

Fareeha knew immediately that the victim of her distracted mind was Hana, mainly due to the indignant outburst that followed. She was carrying a bucket full of what looked like stagnant water, but it was hard to tell since the impact had spilled it across the floor and down Hana's already-stained shirt. What really tipped Fareeha off was the horrible, putrid scent that soon permeated the tiny space.

Hana shot Fareeha a glare before bending over to lift the bucket once more.

"Look," she seethed in a tone that was surprisingly calm, given the circumstances, "I know you're the captain and you're my boss and I am not in any mood to get marooned on an island, but _please_ watch where the hell you're walking."

Taking a closer look at the smaller woman, Fareeha realized she was wearing rubber gloves that ran all the way to her elbows and fisherman's boots that reached all the way up her thighs, a sure sign that she was working on cleaning long-stagnant water out of the ship's the bilge chamber. It was arguably one of the least pleasant jobs on the ship and the fact that she had just poured it down Hana's entire front side made her wince.

"Sorry, Hana," she finally replied, trying not to wrinkle her nose at the horrific smell. "My mind is on other things-"

"Really?" she interrupted, tone absolutely saturated with sarcasm as she pulled a rag out of the pocket of her pants. "I couldn't tell." She tossed the rag on the ground and stamped on it, moving it around with her foot.

"Do you want to get changed?" Fareeha offered. "I can clean this up."

Hana rolled her eyes. "Thanks, but no. I got it."

Fareeha frowned. "Are you sure?"

"It's _fine_." Hana picked the rag up and tossed in back into the bucket. "No point in cleaning up until I'm done. I guess you saved me a trip out to the deck."

"That's a way to look at it," Fareeha snorted, trying to keep the humor out of her voice. "I still can't help but think you'd rather not take a shower in stagnant water, though. Just a hunch."

Hana arched an eyebrow at her. "I'll consider replying to that that once I'm not covered head-to-toe with slime." Before she turned back toward the bilge chamber, Hana looked back at her. "You going to see Lucio?"

It was Fareeha's turn to raise her eyebrow. "How on earth did you guess that?"

Hana gestured to her face. "Because that mermaid kicked your ass."

"It wasn't-"

Hana let out a loud laugh, cutting her off with a smirk. "She love tapped you right in the face with her tail. Is that why you named her Mercy?"

"Her name is Angela," Fareeha corrected her absently, trying to ignore her forming embarassed blush. In the next instant, she felt a brick of solid lead drop into her stomach at the look Hana gave her. The engineer stopped dead, hand on the door.

"Holy shit," she breathed. "Did-"

" _No._ " Fareeha cut her off before the question even came out.

Hana's smirk slowly warped into an ear-to-ear grin. "She spoke to you!" That time it wasn't a question, but an exclamation. "That mermaid told you her name, didn't she?"

"Hana, please-" Fareeha half-begged, as with every passing second, the Korean woman's face became more and more smug.

"That's no fair! I want to talk to the mermaid!"

Fareeha lunged forward, covering Hana's face with both of her hands. Even covered, Fareeha could see that the smirk had not faded from her lips."Be quiet!" she hissed. "The last thing I need is word getting out that she can speak. Do not tell _anyone_ about this! Not a soul!"

Hana lowered her voice several octaves when Fareeha finally let her hands fall from her face. "Afraid of people learning the truth, Captain?"

Fareeha glowered at her, all humor gone from her face. " _Wallahi!_ "

"At least let me tell Lucio, then!" she insisted. "I won't tell anyone else, but he should know. If it weren't for him, that mermaid would still be hiding from us every time we walked in there."

Fareeha lifted her index and middle fingers to her head, massaging her temples as she struggled to keep herself from further arguing with Hana. She simply did not want to run the risk of anyone else overhearing them.

"Fine, _but_ ," Fareeha had to emphasize the word due to the return of Hana's smug grin, "I'm going to go with you and _I_ will tell Lucio what happened."

To Lucio's credit, he took the whole thing with much more grace than Hana did. Granted, that wasn't exactly a high standard to hold one to, but at least he didn't make a scene about it. He didn't even really ask where the wound came from; the medic just resigned himself to treating it. He was silent as Fareeha explained mostly what had happened, though she left the part out where Angela had insulted her before she struck her. Lucio only responded in hums as he worked on her face while Fareeha spoke, helping her to clean the wound, applying a salve and then eventually dressing it with a bandage.

"Pretty incredible, right?" Hana asked once Fareeha had stopped speaking. The engineer had found herself a seat in the back of the cabin that served as Lucio's self-named medical bay, although Hana liked to tease him how that was an incredibly glorified name for what was essentially sleeping quarters with room for storing tonics and ingredients for making salves. Still. Lucio preferred having a more positive connotation for what most sailors would refer to as a sickbay.

Lucio just shrugged as he glanced over in Hana's direction. "I mean, not really. It's not surprising to me. She's always been receptive to our words, so I guessed it was more a case of not wanting to talk versus not being able to." Lucio stood up, tossing his gloves on the table he was seated next to. "It's too bad those idiots spooked her so much. I heard you were making some really good progress with her."

Fareeha did not immediately reply to that. Every bone in her body wanted to agree with him, but she knew that was not the case. Whatever had set Angela off had been personal, not just a

bitterness that they had allowed her to fall into the Shimada's hands in the first place.

Instead of reply to his comment, the captain learned back in her chair with a frown. "Whatever caused it, she's really angry."

"Do you think she's angry or just stressed out?"

"Angry," Fareeha said immediately, flinching as she recalled just how much force that kick to the face had and how much it _still_ hurt. "Absolutely livid is probably more accurate."

Lucio just smiled. "Give me a sec." He disappeared behind a blanket that was nailed to the ceiling towards the back of the room, functioning as a sort of makeshift sleeping area for patients who needed overnight monitoring.

When Lucio reemerged, he was holding his oud. "Let's go pay Angela a visit."

Fareeha walked with them back to the room Angela was in, though was spared the inconvenience of having to unlock the door, as it was still very much off its hinges from where the Shimada goons had tossed it aside.

The mermaid was actually moving when they walked in, swimming around the center of the tank in fast, tight, agitated circles. When she heard them, Angela stopped, facial expression already twisted into a glare before even really looking at them. When she saw Lucio, her face softened ever so slightly. Not by much, but enough to make her look slightly calmer than bloodthirsty. However, the vitriol returned to Angela's eyes the second she noticed Fareeha standing toward the back of the room.

It was such a look of utter loathing that Lucio even turned her way, eyebrow raised in a silent question: _What the hell did you_ do _?_

Fareeha returned Angela's harsh look before saying curtly, "I'll be outside."

As Fareeha leaned against the wall just outside the door, hidden from Angela's view, Fareeha couldn't help but sigh. Nobody in the small cabin was speaking; the only thing she could hear

was whatever soft melody Lucio was playing. Occasionally he'd stop and either him or Hana would ask questions, but Angela never replied, never spoke. She was as silent as they had all come to expect her to be. Over and over again, she played the small wrestling match she'd went through with Angela in her head, trying to reason what exactly she had done to make her so bitter. Perhaps it was the way she spoke to her, perhaps it was she didn't want to be touched.

 _Or perhaps_ , another voice said and Fareeha flinched at the thought, _she simply did not want to return to the ship._

Adding a 'perhaps' to that was a damn joke, and she knew it. She knew without a doubt that Angela was so livid because the last place she wanted to go after Jesse 'rescued' her was straight back into another glass cage. Yet, the knowledge of that did nothing to alleviate the unexplainable heaviness Fareeha felt at the thought that Angela hated her personally. If anything, it made her feel ten times worse.

She wasn't sure how long she stood out there, essentially sulking, but eventually, Lucio popped his head out of the room, gesturing for her to step inside. For obvious reasons, Fareeha hesitated, but eventually followed him to Angela's tank. After several seconds spent watching Angela, Fareeha looked up for either of them, she saw that both Hana and Lucio were standing in the doorway, watching her. Hana's face was contorted into the same grin she'd given Fareeha when she had encountered her in the hallway, whereas Lucio's expression was something more muted. He was also smiling, but it was a far more natural, less antagonistic then Hana's. Wordlessly, he merely nodded his head toward the tank.

Fareeha raised an eyebrow at him. Stifling a laugh, Hana shoved Lucio out of the doorway and out of sight, leaving Fareeha staring at the empty space, eyebrow still arched. Rolling her eyes, Fareeha turned back toward the tank.

The mermaid was sound asleep - a state none of them had seen her in before. Occasionally, Fareeha had seen her resting on the ground or resting her eyes, but she had never seen Angela actually asleep before; the captain had simply assumed merfolk didn't sleep so much as enter a state of semi-consciousness.

Quietly, as to not wake Angela, she approached. Despite the tension that had tainted their last few interactions, Fareeha felt a smile form on her lips when she laid eyes on her.

Angela looked...serene. There was no other word for it. Not even in the calmest, most pleasant interactions she'd had with the mermaid had Angela looked anywhere near at peace as she did at that moment, deep in sleep.

Angela was curled up in a posture Fareeha had seen dozens of times: lying on a deeper pile of sand in the back of the tank, tail curling around her torso, blanket twisted around her body in a way that gave her a bit of padding to rest her head on. Unlike almost every time Fareeha had seen her, though, Angela was smiling, tailfin twitching several times a second in subconscious response to whatever dream she was clearly having. It was such a peaceful scene that Fareeha couldn't help but regret that it was the first time she had ever seen Angela so calm.

As quick as it had formed, Fareeha felt her smile falter, as the ever-familiar knife of guilt lodged itself in her gut and twisted viciously until a sigh passed her lips. It didn't matter what she tried. She could sit down there and spend every waking moment of every day with the mermaid. She could go out of her way to only feed her the largest, most filling fish she could find. She could give her every blanket, grain of sand and seashell she could get her hands on.

It didn't matter.

 _None of it matters._

Angela didn't want to be there, with them, and especially not with her. She wanted her freedom - the freedom she was quite literally dreaming of - and that was nothing Fareeha would never be able to substitute. At the end of the day, she was still a prisoner. Angela was still uncomfortable and miserable and she'd never be as happy as she looked at that moment, in her sleep. At least, not as long as she was on the Raptora. Slowly, Fareeha dropped her hand from the tank.

"I really made a mistake, didn't?" she muttered, voice hardly above a sad, regretful whisper.

Before she woke Angela once more and was further belittled by her icy blue glare, Fareeha turned away from the source of her well-earned guilt and quietly left the dark storage room.

Without much input from her own conscious, her feet carried her to the deck. By that point in the night, the top of the Raptora was almost entirely abandoned save Lena, clearly working a bit later than she normally did. It created a quiet atmosphere that Fareeha had fond memories of. Slowly, she approached the railing, staring at the sky above her, immediately making out one of the dozens of constellations her mother had taught her to recognize when she was just a girl. Normally, it would have put her at peace. That night, it still left her absorbed in thoughts, but they weren't memories - they were just more thoughts of Angela.

Her brown eyes rested on the frothy waves under her feet as the smallest of sighs passed her lips.

"That's not a very good sound coming from you, Cap'n."

Immediately upon hearing the familiar sound of Lena's voice, Fareeha straightened her back, pretending to be focused on something out in front of them.

"I was checking on the navigation," she replied, eyes still on the horizon. "I don't want to make another detour on this assignment."

Lena's brown eyes followed her gaze, brow furrowed, as she could clearly not tell what obscure landmark Fareeha was pretending to look at.

Lena chuckled. "I can promise you that you're in good hands." Pointedly, she reached out to the wheel that controlled the ship's rudder. "I got a flawless track record. Though," she stepped next to Fareeha once more, "navigation helps if you got the tools for the job. Not even I'm good enough to read horizons with my naked eye, luv." With that, she passed the captain a sextant. "'Course, you could just ask me where we're at. Might be less effort on your part."

Fareeha finally cracked a smile as she glanced at Lena out of the corner of her eye. "Nothing escapes you, hm?"

"You aren't exactly subtle, luv. You walk around playing those heavy sighs like a broken record then expect us to not notice when you're down." Lena joined her at the edge of the ship. "So what's really wrong?"

"It's nothing, rea-"

"If she says it's nothin'," another familiar voice drawled, "you have my permission to fling her overboard." Jesse joined the two women, leaning backwards against the ship's railing.

"You're either sleepwalking, or your mind is runnin' a mile a minute. Which is it?"

"I'm _fine_ ," she replied, only barely glancing at him as he pulled out his lighter and ignited the end of a fresh cigar.

"And I'm your damn father. Tell me how ya really feel, 'Reeha. I'd recognize that slouch to your shoulders a mile away. Ya got somethin' on your mind."

"Something that isn't related to navigation, I'm sure," Lena commented, turning her focus back to steering the ship.

"If I had to guess, I'd say it probably involves a mermaid."

"You too, huh?" Fareeha asked wryly.

Jesse chuckled. "What is it this time? She not eating? Torn up about not sellin' her?"

"You could say that," Fareeha replied, glancing at Lena out of the corner of her eye. Lena had turned her full attention back to steering the ship. Fareeha was certain she could still hear the entire conversation, but she seemed to be allowing Jesse to do the talking.

"She's really angry," Fareeha half-sighed.

"So what do you actually plan on doin' with her?" There is was: the question that Fareeha wasn't even able to answer herself. As if reading her mind, Jesse continued, "Let's talk out your options, 'Reeha." He ticked off his finger. "You can sell her-"

"No, I can't," Fareeha said, voice firm in a way that not even McCree argued the point.

"Okay," he said, pausing to draw back on his cigar. "In that case, you can let her go, or you can keep her. You can keep her as long as you like 'til ya know what you wanna do." Fareeha pursed her lips at the thought of that. Of course, he was right. So why did that put such a rancid taste in her mouth?

"You don't seem like you wanna do that, either," he commented. "So that leaves one option."

Finally, Fareeha turned to look at him. "That's the right thing to do, isn't?"

Jesse shrugged. "I suppose that depends on who ya ask. If you ask a bleedin' heart who thinks money is the root of all evil, they'd probably tell you yes. If you ask one of the deckhands on this ship, they'd probably tell you no." He puffed once more. "If it helps, tell me this: why didn't you just sell her to Genji when he asked?"

That she didn't have to think about. "Because it wouldn't have been right."

"And why not?" His voice was as easygoing as ever, but something about the way he said that made it seem like he was poking at something. "Why you figure you were so hell-bent opposed to sellin' her to the Shimadas?"

Fareeha's eyes grew distant as she looked back over the horizon with a sigh. "Because she's not a beast. She's an incredible creature."

Jesse arched an eyebrow at her. "Incredible creature, huh?"

"She _is,_ " Fareeha defended with a shrug, ignoring the little smirk Jesse gave her. "I've never seen anything like her. She's every bit as intelligent as either of us. She even spoke to me, Jesse." Her voice softened. "...she doesn't deserve a life like that."

 _A life like the one I'm giving her by keeping her in that tank._

Jesse didn't anything for several seconds after that; he just took a long draw back on his cigar and puffed a few times. The silence was deafening and before she even know what she was saying, Fareeha blurted out, "I really am no better than the Shimadas, am I?"

Jesse continued to be silent until he sighed, the noise accompanying the last bit of smoke as it evaporates into the night sky. "'Reeha," he said, "what makes you better or worse than the Shimadas is what you _do_ about it."

"And what do you propose I do about it?" she retorted, trying to not make her increasingly sharp tone sound like she was snapping at him.

"Whatever you damn well wanna do about it." He paused to tap the end of his cigar on the edge of the ship."You're the one in charge here. That mermaid has been yours and yours alone since the day she was dragged on this ship, and you know it. You've been the one feedin' her, you've been the one keeping her happy, you were the one who was crying when she was stolen-"

"She isn't _my_ mermaid," she interrupted him. "And I wasn't crying."

He rolled his eyes. "You sure as hell _were_. And you sure as hell weren't stable about the situation." He paused to chuckle. "Point is, ya gotta do what's going to make _you_ the happiest."

"I can't just think of myself-" she started to say, but it was Jesse's turn to cut her off.

"You have to." The stare he was fixing her in was somewhat stern.

Fareeha tried not to sigh. "Jesse, I have an entire ship full of people expecting to make an early retirement off of this trip. What am I supposed to tell them?"

"Since when do you give a damn about what everyone else wants you to do?"

"I _don't_."

Jesse arched an eyebrow at the force of her words. "Then don't worry your head about pleasin' them. This ain't a situation where there's any right answer, Fareeha. Ya got a crew that expects to make money off sellin' a mermaid, ya got a captain who's too enamored with the mermaid to sell it, and ya got a mermaid that's gonna spent the rest of its life miserable if you don't turn it loose." He paused to draw back on his cigar once more. "You're not gonna make everyone happy. You gotta make the choice _you_ can live with."

When Fareeha fell silent, processing his words, Jesse stood up straight with an exaggerated groan. Gently, he clapped a hand to her shoulder as he walked by. "Whatever ya decide to do, just get some rest. Don't lose sleep over it. And," he gave her a familiar smile as his hand dropped, "if by some chance something happens to that mermaid by around dawn, I'll make sure everyone knows of the tragic death she suffered due to stress built on while the Shimadas had her." He gave her a fake grimace. "Can't sell a dead mermaid, now, can we?"

Once Jesse was gone, Fareeha glanced back at Lena, looking for a hint that she had overheard the conversation, but if she had heard anything, she remained impressively quiet about it and just flashed a smile.

 _"You can speak, you can can hear, you can even listen, but you don't understand."_

As Fareeha stood outside the tank, once again staring down the angry mermaid, Angela's words from early that morning rang through her mind, her voice as clear as it would have been if she'd spoken only seconds ago. She understood now, what felt like some of the longest twelve hours of her life later, what the mermaid had meant by those words. Ignoring the hostile look Angela was giving her, Fareeha approached the glass of the tank, locking eyes with the agitated mermaid.  
She understood. God, did she understand. It only took nearly a month, but she finally understood the gravity of a simple decision, and the consequences such a choice had made. There was no way she could possibly expect Angela to forgive her for the weeks of her life they had stolen, but she also knew Angela would understand what had to be done next.  
Fareeha bit back a sigh as she finally reached the front of the tank, looking up at Angela with an expression that even to her felt forlorn. Ever so slightly, Angela's face softened, though more out of shock than anything else. The mermaid's ears lifted from her temple ever so slightly, brows furrowing as Fareeha silently lifted her right hand to the glass and rested her palm against it.

Slowly, Angela inched closer to the front of the tank, studying her with a critical stare. Still, as she moved, her dorsal fin became more relaxed, her ears twitched, expression became less annoyed and more so intense. Finally settling on the floor of the tank directly in front of her, Angela's blue eyes shifted from Fareeha's face to her outstretched hand. For a moment, the mermaid nearly mirrored her motions, but stopped halfway through the motion of lifting her arm, ears snapping back against her skull, eyes narrowing in an intense glare.  
Fareeha didn't budge; she merely continued to watch.  
Several seconds passed before Angela moved again, as her eyes slowly shifted between Fareeha's hand to her face, back to her hand, to her face again. Her tail twitched once before hers gaze finally focused on her hand one last time. Slowly, Angela lifted her own arm, resting her hand on it. The mermaid's face was no longer angry or tense, but had shifted into something incredibly intense, as she stared at both of their hands.  
Angela's hand, Fareeha realized for the first time, was nearly identical to hers, barring the orange webbing loosely tying each of her fingers together. Large, thumbed, built for holding tools. Evolved, just like humans were.  
Fareeha finally let out a sigh she felt she'd been holding in for a year, the ends of her lips twitching upward in the smallest ghost of a smile as she closed her eyes as well.

"Alright," she murmured, so quietly that she was sure Angela couldn't even hear her, "Let's get you home."

Hoisting a crate on top of the one she'd been using as a ladder to give herself a bit more height, she ignored the way Angela's eyes followed her every action, brow furrowed. For a moment, Fareeha's own gaze fell on a net that was lying on the floor not far from the tank. It would sure as hell make the process of lifting Angela out of the tank easier for her, but the captain shoved that idea aside almost as soon as it manifested in her head; there was no way she'd put Angela through that kind of stress. Instead, Fareeha removed the tank's lid entirely, laying it aside so she'd have more space to work.

From where she rested on the bottom of the tank, Angela stared at her, ears once again pressed flat to her skull. The confusion on her face only deeped as Fareeha dipped both of her arms into the tank, up to her elbows.

Fareeha smiled down at her. "I know I haven't exactly been the nicest of hosts, but I'd like to take this outside, if you'd care to join me."

Angela did not budge; she sat as still as stone, looking up at her with narrowed eyes.

After several seconds of silence, Fareeha shugged. "If you'd rather stay here, that's fine too. It's up to you."

The second those words left her mouth, the water broke directly in front of the captain, causing her to jump backwards several feet in shock. She only barely managed to grab the tank for support, refusing to fall on her ass in front of the mermaid more than once. Unlike the last time that happened, Angela did not look playfully amused. Her blue eyes were harsh, staring directly into Fareeha's brown ones, faces only feet apart. Ignoring the slight apprehension she felt over the look Angela was giving her and their close proximity, Fareeha dropped her arms into the tank, sleeves and all, inviting Angela to climb into them once more.

The mermaid stared for a few more seconds, before very slowly and very cautiously inching forward. Gradually, she lowered herself into Fareeha's arms, allowing the joint of her tail to rest over her forearms, grabbing her shoulders for additional support.

Through the slow process, Fareeha was acutely aware of how rigid Angela's body was, and how strongly the mermaid was fighting every single one of her instincts by allowing a human to even touch her, let alone willingly lift her out of a body of water and onto dry land. Angela's tail was especially stiff, prepared to kick away and propel her back into the safety of the tank.

Once Angela was still for a few seconds, Fareeha carefully looked her in the eyes. "Are you ready?"

A few more moments passed before Angela stiffly nodded her head, every inch of her body tense and uneasy. Once she was out of the water, Fareeha hesitated again, just in case she had changed her mind and wanted to dive back in. Angela's however, stayed steadfast in her forced stillness. Even so, Fareeha could tell how scared she was - she'd have been more concerned if Angela had been just okay with the situation she was currently in - so she was careful to keep her movements slow and deliberate, informing Angela when she was about to jostle her or when the scenery was changing.

For the most part, Angela kept her eyes on her own fingertips as she fearfully clung to Fareeha's shoulder blades. Eventually, their eyes did meet but it was only for a second, as Angela quickly went back to staring at her own hands. Once they emerged from the lower deck, the mermaid perked up considerably, eyes immediately shifting toward the horizon. As Fareeha approached the starboard side of the ship, Angela became considerably more fidgety, tail twitching in anticipation as if she was contemplating just leaping overboard. It was a fair reaction from the mermaid, but Fareeha was certain she had no idea just how high up they were from the surface.

"Just a minute," Fareeha told her, tightening her grip before Angela tossed herself off the side of the ship. "You can't just jump off, you'll hurt yourself. " Fareeha looked over to the port side of the Raptora, where they had a number of small rowboats held up by pulleys and rigging. Carefully, she stepped into one of the boats, gently sitting Angela on the floor before reaching toward the ropes holding it up. Much to her surprise, Lena was already standing there.

Before Fareeha think up a lie, Lena quelled her budding anxiety with a smile.

"Don't worry about it, luv. McCree told me what you're up to and I thought you could use a hand."

Fareeha sat down on one of the dinghy's seats, giving the navigator a grateful smile. "Thanks, Lena."

Lena gave both Fareeha and Angela her signature salute. "Just let me know when you're ready to come back up."

Lena steadily lowered the dinghy toward the water. It seemed like an eternity and Fareeha could only hold her breath as the ocean waves grew ever closer.

Much to her surprise, Angela did not immediately leap overboard the second the rowboat touched the water. Quietly, she reached out, skimming the foam-covered surface with her fingertips as a misty look came to her eyes. Once she became aware Fareeha was watching her, the mermaid's ears flicked forward, blue eyes giving her an irritated side glare. Wordlessly, Angela dove into the water, breaking the surface with an elegance that barely caused any disturbance besides the gentle movements of the waves.

Even in the darkness, Fareeha could make out the shape of her golden tail as it moved under the boat. For several minutes, Angela remained near the boat, swimming in circles, performing small spins and flips and clearly just enjoying the infinitely larger space she now had to move freely. Any remaining heaviness Fareeha had felt while carrying the mermaid out to the deck evaporated in that instant, leaving behind a relief that she couldn't place. Perhaps it was just the happiness Angela was completely radiating, even from under the water.

After she was finished with her little dance, the mermaid's torso resurfaced on the starboard side of the dingy. Moving a lock of hair from her face and tucking in behind her ear, Angela slightly hoisted herself back onto the boat and leaned on the side, eyeing the captain critically. The mermaid looked like she was going to say something for a brief second, but instead the words forming on her tongue came out a strange sound that was somewhere between a groan and a sigh.

Fareeha just smiled in return. "You don't have to say anything." She held her hand out to the blonde. "It has been truly an honor meeting you."

Angela tilted her head, clearly not understanding the gesture, and instead gave her an awkward high-five, which almost got a chuckle out of the Egyptian.

 _Close enough._

Not surprisingly, Angela did not return her smile. "You are… not the worst human I've met."

"Fair enough," Fareeha replied, not really able to argue with that; it was probably the closest thing to an actual compliment she'd ever get from a creature- a _person_ \- she had treated as poorly as Angela. "Just try to take care of yourself. You probably don't want to find yourself in a situation like this again."

Angela just gave her a somewhat withering smirk before she lowered herself into the water and disappeared under the waves, fading from Fareeha's view as the ocean welcomed her home.


End file.
